SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 



BY 



WILLIAM HOSIER 



" IT IS A DEBT WE OWE TO THE PURITY OF OTTR RELIGION, TO SHOW THAT IT IS AT VARI- 
ANCE with that law which wabrants slavert."— Patrick, Henry. 



AUBURN: 
WILLIAM J. MOSES. 

1853. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and 

fifty-three, by 

WILLIAM HOSMEE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Northern District of New- York. 



BTEREOTTPED BY 

BEEBY AND MILLEli, 

AUBTJEK. 



FEE FACE. 



Having been engaged, for several months past, in a news- 
paper controversy on the subject of slavery, and having a desire 
to prolong, as well as to deepen, the impression of truth, the 
author has deemed it incumbent upon him to present his views 
to the public in a more systematic and permanent form. He 
flatters himself that his sentiments, when understood, will be 
found to have no other ultraism than that of truth, and no other 
tendency than that of righteousness. 

It is made our duty to " weep with those that weep," and to 
" remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." The 
example of the Samaritan, who relieved the man that fell among 
thieves, is commended to our notice by the injunction, " Go 
and do thou likewise." It would doubtless be easier for the 
present, to pass by on the other side, like the Levite, and leave 
the forlorn and wretched uncared for ; but in that event, what 
becomes of Christian principle 1 and what of fraternal feeling 1 

That a large number of the inhabitants of this Republic — 
more than one-eighth of our entire population — have been 
robbed of.every personal, social, civil, political and religious right, 



IV PREFACE. 

and are at this moment exposed to sale in the market, like cat- 
tle — is no secret. But when this outrage is charged upon its 
perpetrators as a crime, the public are informed that no wrong 
has been done — that Christianity sanctions the act. Believing 
that this allegation is wholly unfounded, and that Christianity 
no more sanctions slavery than it does other high crimes, the 
writer has endeavored to express his dissent plainly, but can- 
didly, and with such argumentative force as patient thought and 
thorough conviction have enabled liim to command. 



CONTENTS. 



♦ -♦ 



PART I. 

THE MORAL CHARACTER OF SLAVERY. 
CHAPTER I. 

SLAYEEY DEFINED, 9 



PAhH. 



CHAPTER n. 

SLAYEEY A SIN", 19 

CHAPTER m. 

SLAYEEY A GEEAT SIN, 29 

CHAPTER IV. 

SLAYEEY A SIN" ENDEE ALL CIECUMSTANCES, ... 33 

CHAPTER V. 

SLAYEEY NOT SANCTIONED BY THE OLD TESTAMENT, . 44 

CHAPTER VI. 

6LAYEEY NOT SANCTIONED BY TETE NEW TESTAMENT, . 52 



VI CONTEXTS. 

CHAPTER YE. 

PAGB. 

SLAVERY NEVER AN ACT OF BENEVOLENCE, ... 61 

CHAPTER VIII. 

SLAVERY NEVER THE RESULT OF NECESSITY, . 4 



PART II. 

THE RELATION OF SLAVERY TO THE CHURCH. 
CHAPTER I. 

SLAVES CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS, 84: 

CHAPTER H. 

SLAVE-HOLDERS CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS, .... 98 

CHAPTER III. 

SLAVERY CANNOT EXIST IN THE CHURCH, . . . .115 



PART III. 

DUTY OF THE CHURCH IX RELATIOX TO SLAVERY. 
CHAPTER I. 

EXTIRPATION OF SLAVERY FROM THE CHURCH, . . 123 

CHAPTER II. 

EXTIRFATION OF SLAVERY FROM THE WORLD, . . 129 



CONTENTS. VTI 

CHAPTER IH. 

PAGE. 

THE EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY DEMANDED BY AN IMPAR- 
TIAL ADMINISTRATION OF CHURCH DISCIPLINE, . 134: 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL TO THE PEACE 

AND UNITY OF THE CHURCH, 141 

CHAPTER V. 

THE EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL TO THE EVAN- 
GELIZATION OF THE WORLD, 155 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY INEVITABLE, . . . . 162 

CHAPTER Vn. 

CIVIL FREEDOM SHOULD BE MADE SUBSERVIENT TO THE 

CAUSE OF EMANCIPATION, 173 

CHAPTER Vm. 

NO MIDDLE GROUND THE CHURCH MUST EITHER 

ABOLISH SLAVERY OR ADOPT IT, 179 

CHAPTER IX. 

CONCLUSION, 197 



SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 



PART I. 

THE MORAL CHARACTER OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER I. 

SLAVERY DEFINED. 

It is important, in the outset of this discussion, to 
ascertain the exact meaning of the term Slavery. Ma- 
ny have appeared as the defenders of slavery, who 
never would have done so, had they admitted the full 
import of the word. They have narrowed down the 
meaning of the term until — in their own imagination 
— it was reduced to a defensible point, and then, with 
great industry, endeavored to construct arguments 
for its support. All this labor might have been saved, 
and the cause of truth not a little advanced, if they 
had adhered to the established use of words. 

A slave, in the proper sense of the word, is one 

whose personal, political, civil, and religious rights 

have been swept away — one who may be bought and 
1* 



10 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

sold, like any other property, and who is obliged to 
obey the commands of a master, whether those com- 
mands are right or wrong. Dr. Webster defines the 
word slave as follows: 1. "A person who is wholly 
subject to the will of another; one who has no free- 
dom of action, but whose person and services are 
wholly under the control of another. The slaves of 
modern times are generally purchased like horses and 
oxen. 2. One who has lost the power of resistance ; 
or, one who surrenders himself to any power whatev- 
er, as a slave to passion, to lust, to ambition." This is, 
perhaps, the highest literary authority on the subject, 
and it is in entire accordance with the slave laws, 
both of our own and other countries, whether relating 
to the present age, or to any former period. A few 
citations from slave laws, which are always the same 
in substance, will settle this question : 

" A slave is one who is in the power of the master to whom 
he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, 
his industry, and his labor ; he can do nothing, possess nothing, 
nor acquire anything but what must belong to his master." 
(Laivs of Louisiana, Civil Code, Art. 35.) 

" The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master." 
(Id., Civil Code, Art. 273.) 

" Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged 
in law, to be chattels personal, in the hands of their own- 
ers and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and as- 
signs, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever." 
(Laws of South Carolina, Brev. Dig., 229.) 

" In case the personal property of a ward shall consist of spe- 



SL AVERY DEFINED. 11 

cific articles, such as slaves, working beasts, animals of any kind, 
stock, furniture, plate, books, and so forth, the court, if it shall 
deem it advantageous to the ward, may, at any time, pass an 
< arder for the sale thereof." (Laws of Maryland, Act of 1798, 
Chap. 61.) 

The above quotations are a sample of tbe slave 
laws of every State and every nation. In some in- 
stances there may be more rigor, in others less, but 
slavery never exists in the absence of the above prin- 
ciples. 

It is of slavery that we write — not of its abuses. 
To treat of the abuses of slavery, would be as absurd 
as to treat of the abuses of any other high crime. 
Hence, our reference to the slave code is sparing, and 
embraces only a few of its most approved and unques- 
tioned principles. What possible enormities are, or 
have been, engrafted upon these principles, is compar- 
atively unimportant, since the system, under any con- 
ceivable administration, would be utterly intolerable. 
It is not for us to talk of incidental and contingent 
horrors attendant upon guilt — it does not become a 
grave, ethical discussion to take advantage of such 
things. If slavery, in its most common and blame- 
less character, is not wholly vile and altogether be- 
yond endurance — if it be not one of the highest 
crimes ever committed by man — then we yield the 
ground at once. AVe have no wish to take advantage 
of any accidental evils connected with slavery. A 
good system might be abused, but the abuses would 
not prove tbe Bjstem bad. In discussing the moral 
character of an act, we only wish to know what the 



12 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

act is in its most simple form. Were we discussing 
the moral character of murder, we should not wish to 
encumber the subject with any special cruelties which 
might have taken place at some particular time ; we 
should only want to know what murder is in its na- 
ture — in its most common and least exaggerated 
character. "We have to do with the substance of sla- 
very, and not with its incidents. 

There are three elements of the slave system wholly 
inseparable from it — three characteristics of the slave, 
which distinguish his condition from that of all other 
persons : 

1. The slave is under the entire control of his mas- 
ter. 

2. The slave is property — a chattel, real or personal. 

3. The slave is a perpetual, unconditional, heredi- 
tary servant. 

Of these in order. 

Absolute Subjection. 
The entire supremacy of the master is absolute- 
ly essential to slavery. The system could not exist 
if this main pillar were removed. Masters claim, 
and the law gives them, entire control. Slaves must 
do what they are bidden, be it right or wrong, or 
suffer any punishment their owners see proper to 
inflict. The law recognizes no right in the slave to 
resist the master in anything — no, not even in de- 
fending his own life or virtue. It is true, the slave 
laws of this country do not directly authorize the 
master to take the life of the slave at pleasure ; and 



SLAVETCY DEFINED. 13 

in this respect they are perhaps better than the slave 
laws of ancient Greece and Rome ; bnt all slave own- 
ers indirectly have this authority. They may com- 
mand the slave to do what they please, and kill him 
if he disobeys — that is, whip him to death for stub- 
bornness, or shoot him for alleged resistance. As no 
slave is allowed to be a witness in any case against 
his master, or any other white person, it is impossible 
to bring the offender to justice, nnless he has had the 
indiscretion to commit the offence before a white per- 
son. The slave has not one religious or civil privi- 
lege guaranteed to him. In respect to everything of 
this kind, he stands before the law, not as a human 
being, but as a brute, to be disposed of according to 
the will of the owner. Blackstone truly calls this 
power " absolute and unlimited," and considers it es- 
sential to the idea of slavery : 

' : Pure and proper slavery does not, nay, cannot, subsist in 
England: such, I mean, whereby an absolute and unlimited 
power is given to the master over the life and fortune of the 
slave. (Obmwa., Book i, Ch. 14.) 

It would be well if the law went no farther, but it 
even lays the master under disabilities : he may not 
emancipate the slave, nor pay him wages, nor elevate 
him by education; that is, the law will not permit 
either of these things without embarrassment, and 
some of them it wholly prohibits. Thus, while tho 
master has all authority for evil towards his slave, his 
authority for good is seriously abridged. It follows, 
therefore, that slavery is not only an absolute personal 



14 SLAVERY AXD THE CHUECH. 

despotism on the part of the master, but a malignant 
despotism — it may never relax into justice or gene- 
rosity. The law may, or may not authorize special bar- 
barity; but it never gives to the master less than 
entire and undisputed authority over the slave. 
Hence, where such control is wanting, we cannot 
denominate the condition slavery — it is not slavery, 
whatever else it may be. 

Slaves are Property. 
The slave is unquestionably property, and nothing 
but property — a chattel — so claimed by all slave- 
holders, and so designated by all slave laws. By 
this one provision he is stricken from the human, 
and classed with the brute. He ceases to be a 
man, and takes rank with cattle. He is mere pro- 
perty — a thing to be bought, and sold, and possess- 
ed, as freely and truly as a horse or an ox, or any 
inanimate chattel, as, for instance, a watch or a 
wagon. It is not merely the slave's services that are 
owned, or bought, or sold in this manner ; no — it is 
himself — his body and soul, with all their powers and 
capabilities. It is the man converted into a thing, 
that constitutes the article of traffic. To man, as 
man, belong certain inalienable rights; but toman, 
as a slave, belongs nothing. His flesh, and bones, 
and spirit, and life, are the property of another. He 
is a chattel personal, and liable to all the chances of 
property, like any other chattel. He has not even the 
right to life. His master may be forbidden to kill 
him, but the slave has no right to remonstrate against 



SLAVERY DEFINED. 15 

being killed. This feature of slavery is considered by 
Mr. Barnes as the chief characteristic of the institu- 
tion. It is, however, but one of the characteristics 
of slavery ; there are other things equally funda- 
mental, although such ownership as the master has in 
the slave is wholly unknown to any other relation in 
life. The husband possesses his wife, but she is not a 
chattel ; parents possess children, but they are not 
chattels ; masters have servants, but servants are not 
chattels : in none of these relations is there anything 
analogous to this feature of slavery. It is slavery, 
and slavery only, that strips a man of humanity so 
completely as to make him take rank with articles of 
merchandise. 

Slaves are Servants. 

Some have endeavored to show that slavery con- 
sists in mere servitude. 

" I define slavery," says Dr. Paley, " to be an obligation to 
labor for the benefit of the master, without the contract or con- 
sent of the servant." (Mor. and Pol. Phil., Book iii, Ch. 3.) 

This is only a description of involuntary servitude, 
and includes but a part of what is necessary to con- 
stitute slavery. Dr. Fuller, who tries to defend 
slavery on the basis of this definition, is, therefore, 
wholly at fault. Blackstone expressly affirms that 
servitude may be perpetual, where slavery is not pos- 
sible : 

"A slave or a negro, the moment he lands in England, falls 
under the protection of the law, and so far becomes a free- 



16 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

man ; though the master's right to his services may possibly 
continue." (Com?n., Book i, Ch. 1.) 

Again : " It is now laid down that a slave, or negro, the in- 
stant he lands in England, becomes a freeman ; that is, the 
law will protect him in the enjoyment of his person and his 
property ; yet with regard to any right which the master may 
have lawfully acquired to the perpetual service of John or 
Thomas, this will remain exactly the same." (Id., Book i, 
Ch. 14.) 

It will not do, therefore, to make the idea of ser- 
vitude alone, the representative of slavery, inasmuch 
as it comprehends only one element of slavery^. By 
way of illustration, we may take the crime of mur- 
der, and define it thus — " killing a human being ;" or 
even thus, " willfully killing a human being." But 
would either of these definitions be correct ? Xot at 
all. And yet it is true, beyond all doubt, that killing 
a human being is essential to the crime of murder, as 
cognizable by our laws. The fact is, the above defini- 
tions include only a part of what is comprehended in 
the crime specified, and for this reason cannot be ad- 
mitted as correct. The same is true of Dr. Paley's 
definition of slavery. He has defined what may be 
a crime, but not what constitutes the crime in ques- 
tion. The difference is this : all slaves are servants, 
but all servants are not slaves. Kor does the qual- 
ification — '-without the contract or consent of the 
servant" — by any means embrace all the essential 
features of the slave system. A servant, though his 
servitude bo perpetual, may be no chattel; his re- 
maining personal rights may be secured by law as ef- 



SLAVERY DEFINED. 



17 



fectually as those of any other man, and his children 
may be free in all respects. But the servitude of 
the slave is perpetual, unconditional, and hereditary- 
it applies to him and all his descendants for all time, 
without any qualifications whatever. 

Either the above is a just exposition of slavery, or 
we have no word in our language expressive of the 
condition of the unemancipated colored man in the 
Southern States. A servant he is, and that, too, un- 
der the most abject circumstances, but he is far more 
than a servant: he is a thing— a chattel personal, 
and the service which he performs is done, not with 
his own hands, for he has no hands with which to la- 
bor—his limbs belong to his master. He is more than 
a servant chattel— he is a subject of the most absolute 
despotism. The master's will is the slave's only law. 
He may heed no other command, whether emana- 
ting from God or man. It appears, therefore, that 
slavery is a term used to signify a complication of 
wrongs. It denotes one who is stripped of all but life, 
and whose life is held by a very uncertain tenure — 
the will of his master. 

This is slavery as it exists among us, and as it has 
existed in all ages of the world. It is not an exagger- 
ated picture, drawn for effect, but an exact and care- 
ful delineation of the system, as it stands recorded up- 
on the statute books of slave-holding States. Kor 
are these laws in any respect a dead letter. They are 
everywhere enforced to the full extent, or at least as 
much so as any human laws. We never hear of the 
slave's becoming free through the inoperative char- 



18 



SLAVERY AND TIIE CHURCH. 



acter of the laws. His personal treatment may be 
better or worse, but he is still a thing, and not a 
man. His good treatment gains no legal immunities 
for him, or his wife, or his children. Chattels thej 
are, and chattels they must forever remain, while un- 
der the slave law. 

Our estimate of the system must be formed on the 
basis of its entire character, and not on any of its 
particular features. The parts separately may be 
more tolerable than when combined. We shall, there- 
fore, speak of slavery, not as it has been defined by 
its apologists, but as it is — not as an ideality which 
never had an existence, except in the mind of its in- 
ventor, but as an actual institution, known and read 
of all men. We readily admit, that the continued 
introduction of what does not belong to the definition, 
would vitiate it, just as certainly as do the omissions 
which we have noticed in the definition of murder. 
If we should define murder to be " killing a man 
with malice aforethought, by burning him over a 
slow fire," the definition would be faulty through 
excess— it includes more than is necessary, and more 
than commonly attaches to the crime of murder. 
Just so with slavery : if we define it to be " an ob- 
ligation to labor for the benefit of the master, with- 
out the contract or consent of the servant, and also to 
be a chattel personal in the hands of the master, sub- 
mitting, in all things to his sovereign, unlimited con- 
trol, and receiving forty lashes a day" — the definition 
will at once be pronounced incorrect, because the 
forty lashes per day are not essential to the condition 



SLAVEItY DEFINED. 19 

of the slave, nor arc they commonly inflicted. They 
may be inflicted if the master pleases, and so may 
the murderer burn his victim over a slow fire, or 
cut him into inch pieces. The definition we have 
given is based on the laws of the slave States, and on 
the entire history of slavery, as it now prevails, and 
lias prevailed in all ages < >f the world. It is important 
to distinguish between slavery and serfdom, or ville- 
na^e, or servitude. The latter have some of the ele- 
ments of slavery — just as excusable homicide has 
some of the elements of willful murder — but, as 
we never confound the different kinds of killing, so 
neither should we the different kinds of servitude. 
Let slavery stand upon its own merits, as defined by 
law, and by the common language of men, especially 
where its ethical character is under consideration. 
We have no right to pervert the meaning of the term, 
and then pronounce it either good or bad, according 
to our definition. 



CHAPTER II. 

SLAVERY A SIN". 

As we have defined slavery, its moral obliquity ad- 
mits of no dispute, except among that class who be- 
lieve the slave was made to be a slave, and that he 
has no capacities or rights beyond what are provided 



20 SLAVERY AXD THE CrTLTtCH. 

for in that abject condition. But even those who base 
their argument on the assnmed inferiority of the slave, 
must yield the point, or push their conclusions much 
farther than they have yet done. The humanity of 
the slave must be denied, or the sinfulness of slavery 
is evident. Short of this extreme, the advocates of 
slavery cannot stop ; because the rights of man be- 
long to man under every exigency of life ; they are 
inherent in his nature, and cannot be separated there- 
from by the arbitrary institutions of society. Human 
laws do not reach the endowments which we receive 
from nature. Manhood is prior to law, and therefore 
always paramount when the claims of law and hu- 
manity come into conflict. 

The sinfulness of Slavery is established by argu- 
ments drawn from the following sources : 

1. The constitution of man. 

2. The civil law. 

3. The moral sense of mankind. 

4. The Scriptures. 

1. The Constitution of Man. 

" Sin is the transgression of the law." It is the trans- 
gression of any right law, whether divine or human. 
The law of God is embodied in the constitution of his 
creatures no less plainly than in the ten commandments 
that were written upon tables of stone. The nature and 
faculties of man declare for what he was made, and 
proclaim slavery a violence and an indignity offered to 
the Creator's work. The slave is a man, and hence, 
justly entitled to be treated as a man. He is a man, 



SLAVERY A SIN. 21 

and is obligated to perforin the duties of a man. But 
slavery will admit of neither; it takes away all his 
rights as a member of the human family, and all his 
obligations as a creature of God. The following ob- 
servations of Dr. Whewell bear upon both of these 
points with much force : 

"As far as the limits of humanity extend, there are mutual 
tirs of duty which bind together all men, and as the basis of all 
others, a duty of mutual kindness; which, as we see, is ac- 
knowledged by the jurists as well as the moralists of Rome, in 
spite of the originally narrow basis of their jurisprudence. The 
progress of the conception of humanity, as a universal bond 
which knits together the whole human race, and makes kind- 
ness to every member of it a duty, was immeasurably pro- 
moted by the teaching and influence of Christianity. In the 
course of time, domestic slavery was abolished ; and marriage 
received the sanction of the church, and was alike honorable in 
all. The antipathies of nations, the jealousies of classes, the 
selfishness, fierceness and coldness of men's hearts, the narrow- 
ness and dimness of their understandings, have prevented their 
receiving cordially and fully the comprehensive precepts of be- 
nevolence which Christianity delivers ; but, as these obstacles 
have been more and more overcome, the doctrine has been more 
and more assented to, and felt to be true, by all persons of moral 
culture ; that there is a duty of universal benevolence which wo 
are to bear to men as men ; and which we are to fulfill by 
dealing with them as men — as beings having the like affec- 
tions and reason, rights and claims which we ourselves have. 

" This conception of humanity as a principle within us, re- 
quiring us to recognize in others the same rights which we claim 
for ourselves, may be further illustrated. Such a princi ple of 
humanity, requiring us to recognize men as men, requires us 
more especially to recognize them as such in their capacity of 



22 SLAVEBT AND THE CHURCH. 

moral agents. They have not only like desires and affec- 
tions with ourselves, but also like faculties of reason and self- 
guidance, by which they discern the difference of right and 
wrong, and feel the duty of doing the right and abstaining from 
the wrong. This view of their condition as moral agents, is that 
by which we must entirely sympathize with them ; as it is the 
view of our own condition in which we are fully conscious of 
ourselves. Humanity requires that we should feel satisfaction 
in the desires and means of enjoyment of our fellow men ; but 
humanity requires, still more clearly, that we should feel a sat- 
isfaction in their having the desires and the means of doing 
their duty. Now, the fundamental rights of which we have so 
often spoken, the rights of the person, of property, and the like, 
are means and necessary conditions of duty. It is necessary 
to moral action, that the agent should be free, not liable to un- 
limited and unregulated constraint and violence ; that is, that 
he should have the rights of the person. It is necessary to 
moral action, that the agent should have some command over 
external tilings ; for this is implied in action ; that is, it is ne- 
cessary that he should have the rights of property. And, in 
like manner, in order that any class of persons may exist perma- 
nently in a community, as moral agents, it is requisite that they 
should possess the right of marriage ; for without that right, some 
of the strongest of man's desires cannot be under moral control ; 
nor can the sentiment of rights be transmitted from one gene- 
ration to another. The right of contract is a necessary accom- 
paniment of the right of property ; for, if the person can pos- 
sess, he may buy and sell. And thus these rights are necessary 
conditions of men's being moral agents ; and the humanity 
which makes us desire that all men should be able to regulate 
themselves by a love of duty, requires that all should be invest- 
ed with these rights." {Mem. Mor., Book iii, Chap. 23.) 

The slave, being human, must be permitted to ex- 
ercise the functions of humanity, or the end for which 



SLAVERY A GLNf. 23 

he was created is contravened. If lie is to be degra- 
ded from manhood to a level with the brutes, his hu- 
man endowments are superfluous, and ought to have 
been withheld. If his powers of thought are not to be 
exercised, if his sense of obligation is to be contract- 
ed to the single point of obedience to his master, and 
if he may neither possess anything, nor acquire any- 
thing, why were the faculties, the capacity for doing 
these things, conferred upon him ? Was it intended 
that these powers should remain latent ? or were they 
as evidently designed to be cultivated in the slave as 
in other men 1 The slave is a man, and has the right 
to be a man. This is the order of God with reference 
to him, and as plainly expressed as if it had been the 
subject of a special revelation from Heaven. Do we 
need a revelation to inform us what our hands and 
feet, our eyes and ears, were made for ? Could a su- 
pernatural communication of that kind render their 
use any more apparent ? Not in the least. Finding, 
then, man endowed as he is, the use of those endow- 
ments can no longer be questioned. If the eye was 
made to see with in one case, it was made to see with 
in all cases ; that is, it was made to be used, and used 
according to its original design. To make a man 
throw aside his humanity and become a chattel, to blot 
him out from civil society, and remove from him eve- 
ry right which is peculiar to man — to do all this, is 
as clearly sinful as it would be to cut off the hands 
or the feet without cause, and even more so, because 
the intellectual, social and moral powers which slave- 
ry blights, are of greater consequence than the mem- 



24 SLAVERY AXD THE CHURCH. 

bers of the body. In short, under the slave system, 
man cannot be man ; and this blight upon his powers, 
this necessity of sinking below the nature that God 
has given, is manifestly a perversion of that nature, 
and a sin against the primal law of his being. 

2. The Civil Law. 

Slavery is a perversion of nature, and can only exist 
by positive statute. This is admitted by slave-holders 
themselves. No man is born a slave, except as the 
civil law under which he is born declares him to be 
such. It is not remarkable, therefore, that all law is 
naturally against the institution. Slave legislation is 
special ; it is a departure from all the ordinary prin- 
ciples of law-making. The citation of authorities 
here can scarcely be necessary, since it is known to 
all that the sole design of law is to promote the wel- 
fare of men. Its objects are rights and wrongs — the 
enforcement of the former and the prohibition of the 
latter. Blackstone says the civil law is properly de- 
fined to be, 

" A rule of civil conduct, prescribed by the supreme power 
in the State, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is 
wrong." (Comm., Int., Section 2.) 

He further adds : 

" Justinian lias reduced the whole doctrine of law to these 
three general precepts: 1. That we should live honestly; 2. 
Should hurt nobody ; 3. And should render to every one his 
due." (Ibid.) 

Burke says, " law is beneficence acting by rule;" and 



SLAVERY A SIX. 

with tliis agree all writers on law. Tlic ci\ il law is, 
therefore, clearly on the side of tin If the in- 

stitution of law bears upon him at all, it is bound by 
its very nature to do him good. The law should know 
him only for his benefit. And yet, si range to Bay, law 
is made the instrument of the complete and total 
version of all his rights. By law, he is driven from 
among men, and made to take rank with brutes. Thus 
an institution which professedly aims at the happiness 
of every man, becomes the direct occasion of immeas- 
urable injustice. Slavery is the greatest possible out 
rage upon law ; it destroys every thing that law was 
intended to preserve. I shall not here attempt to 
show the causes of this anomaly, hut simply mark its 
atrocity. That people who cherish civil law, and who 
thereby profess to he aiming at protection and jus 
for all, should so far pervert law as to render it de- 
structive of all protection and justice, is truly aston- 
ishing. The slave is a man, and claims, as rightfully 
as any other man, every advantage that can flow from 
the civil law. How men can sustain Buch law, and 
yet deny the colored man all participation in it- ben- 
efits, is a mystery not easily solved. It is violating 
all the principles of law. If the negro is a man, he 
is entitled to protection, and to withhold it from him 
is an arbitrary and wicked departure from the avow- 
ed purposes of government. AVe see not how slavery 
can be regarded otherwise than sin, if the maxii: 
law are right, for it pours contempt upon them all. 
Instead of guarding, it robs; instead of aining 
rights, it tramples them in the du 

2 



26 SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 

3. The Moral Sense of Mankind. 

Slavery is repugnant to the moral feelings. Law 
may be perverted till it sanctions the greatest crimes, 
but the moral sense of man must always condemn it. 
The slave is, or is not, a man ; if the former, he has the 
same rights as other men ; if the latter, his rights are on- 
] v those of brute nature. Whatever the law may ordain 
in the case, conscience is inflexible. We must either 
cease to make moral distinctions — must abandon all 
ideas of right and wrong, as applicable to men, or 
else allow that the slave has the same rights as our- 
selves. There is no rule in ethics by which we can 
distinguish the rights of the white man from the rights 
of the colored man. Justice is the same to both ; 
protection, liberty, happiness, and all other blessings 
are the same to man, whatever may be the color of 
his skin. If the law gives all power to one complex- 
ion and denies all to the other, then the law is palpa- 
bly subversive of right — it is wanting in that attri- 
bute of rectitude which is essential to law. 

Slavery cannot be made to agree with moral prin- 
ciple, except upon the gratuitous assumption that the 
slave is not human. In order to fasten chains upon 
the unoffending negro, we have to sever him from the 
brotherhood of man. This the moral sense will not 
admit, and hence slavery is of necessity branded as a 
crime. 

4. The Scriptures. 
It has been assumed by the supporters of slavery, 
that the institution is sanctioned by the Scriptures. 



SLAVERY A SIN. 27 

Indeed, they have claimed for it almost every kind 
of support, but we shall show now, and mure fully 
hereafter, that slavery is not only not countenanced 
by the Lible, but absolutely prohibited. The ques- 
tion is not, whether sonic particular features of 
slavery ever had an existence under the sanction 
of Scripture, but whether or not the system of slave- 
ry, as it exists in tin's country and has existed in eve- 
ry country, and in every age, is s<> sanctioned. Ser- 
vitude was allowed, but we have shown that servitude 
alone is not slavery. The purchase of a servant was 
allowed, but did not reduce the servant to a chattel. 
Beyond this, no one will presume to allege Scripture 
authority for the complicated abominations implied in 
the term slavery. On the other hand, the Scriptures 
pointedly assert the manhood of man, declaring- that 
God " hath made of one blood all nations of men," 
and that " he is no respecter of persons." These dec- 
larations overthrow the only foundation on which 
slavery rests. As we have said, it is not possible in 
physiology, or law, or morals, to find a reason for en- 
slaving a man ; he must be presumed to be an inferi- 
or nature, before so great a calamity can he inflicted 
upon him. But. Christianity sternly repels all ideas 
of inferiority as attaching to any particular race or 
class of mankind. Again, the Scriptures may not 
prohibit slavery in form, but they do so in foci, by 
enjoining holiness upon all men, and forbidding in de- 
tail the several >ins which, in their aggregate, consti- 
tute the crime of slavery. Injustice is prohibited, and 
this prohibition strikes at the robbery practiced by 



28 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

the slave-holder, in denying the slave the rights which 
belong to him as a member of the human family. In 
like manner, unkindness, cruelty, neglect, and oppres- 
sion are forbidden towards all men, and, consequent- 
ly, towards the slave. But slavery could not exist, 
apart from these wrongs ; it is made up of them, and 
falls to the ground when they cease. The Scriptures 
enjoin all kindness towards our fellow men, but sla- 
very is opposed to kindness — it is ever studious of all 
unkindness to its victims. Once more, the Scriptures 
command us to love our neighbor as ourselves, but 
this cannot be done by him who denies his brother 
personal freedom and the rights of manhood. 

But more than all, the obligations which the Bible 
lays upon every man, render slavery an utter impos- 
sibility. God claims supreme authority over every 
man, and has made it the duty of every man to obey 
him in all things. This limits the despotism of 
slavery. It also prevents the traffic in men. They 
cannot be chattels, and still be Christians. They 
have the duties of husband and wife, parents and 
children, to perform, and these duties, every one of 
them, are in open and eternal conflict with slavery. 
We therefore conclude that the Bible ignores the re- 
lation of master and slave, whatever it may teach re- 
specting master and servant. 



SLAVERY A GREAT SIX. 20 

CHAPTER III. 

SLAVERY A GREAT SIN. 

The conclusion that slavery is a sin — however 
clearly sustained — does by no means cover the whole 
ground. It is a sin, beyond doubt, but there arc ma- 
ny who esteem it only a venial sin — such an one as 
is greatly palliated by the circumstances, having lit- 
tle or nothing of the enormity which attaches to 
crime. But all such notions are most unfounded. 
Slavery is not only a sin, but a sin of the greatest 
atrocity. It is an enormity in the moral world. It 
breaks every law of God, and every law of man — 
except the slave law. Not, indeed, if slavery is only 
servitude — not if we exclude despotism and chattel- 
ship. Were there nothing more than simple service 
required of the slave, and had he secured to him the 
rights of a man in all other respects, his condition 
might be tolerable, or, if not tolerable, yet much less 
intolerable than now, and, therefore, less guilty. 
Such mitigation is unknown — where slavery is, there 
man always is, and always must be, a chattel, " en- 
tirely subject to the control of his master." The de- 
gradation is total, and the sin proportionate. 

The extreme criminality of slavery as compared 
with other infractions of law, lies in its cutting off 
the possibilities of happiness. It takes not singly — 
it invades not by degrees, but sweeps everything at 
once and forever. Other crimes usually assault us in 



30 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

detail, and rob or injure by piece-meal, taking here 
and there a little, clandestinely or otherwise, but leav- 
ing on the whole far more than they take. The most 
rapacious robber, if he spares life, leaves character 
and liberty, wife and children, health and hope. But 
the slave-holder takes all — person and property, wife 
and children, together with all their capacities and 
powers, for all time to come. Nothing is left to the 
slave, unless it be animal life, and that is his — or 
rather in his possession, for his master's use — only on 
the most precarious terms. Common robbery is un- 
doubtedly a great crime, yet, contrasted with slavery, 
it sinks into utter insignificance ; it is a fault so 
venial that it scarcely deserves censure. Theft is a 
crime, but wdiat other thief ever stole as the slave-hol- 
der steals ? He takes the man and all his present and 
future acquisitions. Oppression is a sin, yet no mere 
political tyrant ever crushed humanity in so grievous 
a manner as the slave-holder. The worst of rulers 
never claimed to sell his subjects as he would cattle — ■ 
never made them articles of merchandise, and traf- 
ficked in them without restraint — never forbid their 
marriage, or owning property, or becoming citizens. 
But slave-holders do this, and do it according to law. 
Our laws declare the foreign slave trade to be ifiracy, 
and punish it with death, but the domestic slave trade, 
which is every way as bad, they uphold with all the 
strength of the government. 

Thus it is clear that slavery is equivalent to a com- 
bination of all the worst acts known to the penal code 
of civilized nations, if we except the single crime of 



SLAVERY A GREAT SIN. 31 

munlcr. And even tills exception can hardly bo 
made, because the slave's life has no adequate legal 
protection. Henceil ation to pronounce 

the system the k> sum of all \ illainies." It amounts to 
tlii- by the most sober calculation. All rights that 
the law could or should have pr Btroyed, 

by putting the individual beyond the pale of society. 
All that civil \u\\ would have made his, is thus taken 
from him and given t<> his master. 

But tins grand act of spoliation only reaches to the 
temporal relations of the slave. As if to enhance 
the wrong to the uttermost, the tie which hind- man 
to his Maker is severed as far as it can he by hu- 
man authority, and the master takes the place of 
No slave has a right to perform any act of 
Worship without the consent of his owner. He may 
not keep the Sabbath, nor hear the gospel preached, 
nor pray, nor confess Christ. For him, there are no 
mean- <»t' grace but such as his master may choose. 
If the master chooses none, the slave must submit 
or Buffer any punishment his owner sees proper to 
inflict. The rights of conscience are unknown to 
slavery. The slave is supposed to have no conscience ; 
his whole duty being to obey in all things, his own- 
er <>r any one whom his owner may appoint. Here, 
then, is a human being divested of all right to obey 
his Creator in the performance of those high duties 
which are enjoined equally upon every man. It is 
not a simple curtailment of religious liberty, hut — if 
the master so orders — atotal abnegation of the right 
of worship. The law has provided not the smallest 



32 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

fraction of relief for the slave's conscience, however 
sorely oppressed. What is such a system but pre- 
meditated spiritual murder? It is the complete 
abandonment of the soul as well as the body to the 
unrestrained authority of any person whom the slave 
is obliged to call master. Now, if the slightest in- 
terference with our obligations to God is a sin, what 
shall we say of a system that cuts off all obligation 
forever ? If to coerce the conscience even in a few 
particulars, is an offence too great to be tolerated, 
how enormous must be the crime of trampling the 
moral faculties in the dust, as though they formed no 
part of our nature ? To style such a system wicked, 
conveys no adequate impression of its monstrous 
character. Wicked it is, but more so, infinitely, than 
any ordinary form of vice. It is a transcending, all- 
pervading usurpation ; it leaves not a vestige of spir- 
itual or temp-oral power to those on whom God has 
laid all the duties of humanity. It assumes the re- 
sponsibility of blotting out not single rights, but all 
rights of every kind, leaving the whole man as much 
a blank as he would have been, had the creating hand 
denied him every human endowment. 

It is tame to call such a frightful outrage, wrong. 
There wants a name in language sufficiently strong 
to characterize an evil of this kind. AVe are not ac- 
customed to view man apart from law, and the crimes 

rich he commits and the injuries he suffers are mostly 
violations of some single law ; but in the case of the 
slave we hftve no such rule ; he is in a state of legal des- 
olation. £fo man can commit a crime against him, nor 



A BIN UNDER ALL CEKCOISTANCES. 33 

can lie commit a crime against any man. If he is kil 1- 
ed, it is not murder. If he kills, it is not murder. lie 
is not indictable for any offence. The law kn< >ws him 
not, except as the property of hismaster; stripped of 
ill protection, save as property is protected, he stands 
an outcast from the human family. What additional 
prong has society to inflict? All that law could 
have made his, is taken from him by putting him 
beyond the operation of law — the law, in fact, is 
not only broken at a single point, as in ordinary crime, 
but broken at all points, and removed out of the way, 
that it may never more oppose a barrier to the mas- 
ter's rapacity. If even a single violation of a right- 
eous law is wicked, what must be the enormous wick- 
edness of a system that is not contented with solitary 
infractions, but destroys the very existence of law I 
These considerations place the system in the list of 
highest crimes. There is no law but the slave law 
that it does not break — none that it does not utterly 
destroy. It is a pure, unmixed sin, scorning isola- 
tion or selection, and like the Angel of Death, carry- 
ing indiscriminate destruction wherever it goes. 



CHAPTER IY. 

SLAVERY A SIX EXBER ALL CIRCTM3TAXCES. 

The advocates of slavery have strangely asserted 
that the guilt or innocence of slave-holding depends 
2* 



84 



SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 



upon circumstances. This is to place slavery where 
it does not belong, among things pure in themselves, 
and vicious only by abuse. Dr. Fuller thus states 
the case : 

" The enormities often resulting from slavery, and which ex- 
cite our abhorrence, are not inseparable from it — they are not 
elements in the system, but abuses of it. What is slavery? 
1 1 define slavery,' says Paley, < to be an obligation to labor for 
the benefit of the master, without the contract or consent of the 
slave.' This is all that enters into the definition of slavery, and 
now what ingredient here is sinful ? Suppose a master to ren- 
der unto his servant the things that are just and equal ; suppose 
the servant well clothed and religiously instructed, and to re- 
ceive a fair reward for labor in modes of compensation best 
suited to his condition ; might not the Bible permit the relation 
to continue, and might it not be best for the slave himself? 
Recollect that when you tell us of certain laws, and customs, 
and moral evils, and gross crimes, which are often incidents of 
slavery in this country, we agree with you, and are most anx- 
ious for their removal." [First Letter to Dr. Waylaxd.) 

I have shown in the first chapter of this work, that 
the definition of slavery, quoted from Paley, and re- 
lied on by Dr. Fuller, here, amounts to nothing. It 
is no more a definition of slavery than a straight line 
is a definition of a triangle. But even admitting that 
this is a correct view of slavery, the case is not ma- 
terially altered ; for the service claimed is at war with 
the original and inalienable rights of mankind— it is 
a service without the contract or consent of the ser- 
vant, and we maintain that the Bible never author- 
ized such a relation between man and man. 
The effect of this kind of reasoning is to divest 



A SIN UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. 35 

slavery of intrinsic evil — to show that it is not a sin 
j>< r 86, and may be tolerated if well used. It is made 
to take rank with good things, such as marriage, civil 
eminent, and the parental relation — all which 
may be sources of evil, but are essentially right, or at 
least not essentially wrong, in themselves. Hence, 
an attempt has been made to make the character of 
slavery turn wholly upon the motives of the slave- 
holder. 

Dr. Bond, who declares himself the staunch enemy 
of slavery, takes a position coincident with that as- 
sumed by Dr. Fuller, in the foregoing extract : 

" Now, when we admitted that slavery was sinful, we spoke 
of it as our Discipline does, as systematized in the slave laws 
of our Southern States. In these, slavery is no longer an ab- 
stract idea. It receives body and form, and is actually a wrong 
and an outrage on humanity. We deal in no abstractions. 
We look at the thing as it exists, and as it exhibits itself in 
its actual operation. We have not said that slavery as an ab- 
stract idea is a sin ; but that slavery, as established by law in 
this country, is sinful — a national sin, for which God will in- 
flict national punishment. 

" But we further admit, that whoever avails himself of the 
power which these laws give him, to hold his fellow man as 
property, fur gain — not from mercy or benevolence to the 
slave — is a sinner before God. But the quality of the act 
depends upon the motive. It is not the abstract idea of slavery 
that characterizes slave-holding, but the motives which influence 
the slave-holder, and of these God only can judge. Men may 
hypocritically allege merciful motives for holding slaves, but 
men may also urge them sincerely and truly. No church ju- 
dicatory can decide upon motives, when the circumstances of 



30 SLATEEY A3D THE CHURCH. 

the case do not make the motives apparent ; and therefore no 
ral rule can be applied without wrong and injustice." 
. and Jour., Nov. 10, 1S52.) 

If the character of slavery depends upon the mo- 
tive, when the motive is good, of course slavery is 
good. This conclusion is unavoidable, from the above 
premises. But the doctrine of motives has a wide 
application — it is not merely the motive of mercy 
that is allowable, in reference to things in themselves 
harmless. Gain is a lawful, and even a commendable 
motive, and one of the principal motives of all in- 
dustry. And if slavery is neither good nor bad in 
itself, and its character is wholly determined by mo- 
tives, it follows that the motive of gain, which is good 
in itself, may possibly be applied to slavery as well 
as to other things. It is true that there are acts which 
demand a higher motive, and if it can be shown that 
converting our fellow men into chattels personal is one 
of those high and holy duties from which all secular 
motives should be excluded, we admit that slave-hold- 
ing for gain is sinful. The sole motive of slavery is 
gain. For gain, the negroes were brought to this 
country, and for gain, they have been kept in bondage 
up to this hour. Xo other motive can be alleged, or 
need to be alleged ; the motive is good enough, but 
the act is wicked, and would be if the motives were 
ever so exalted. It is not better motives but better 
acts that the slave-holder needs. 

The argument, then, is on the essential nature of 
slavery, and not on any of its alleged accidents or 
abuses. If slavery is not a sin, per se, it may un- 



A SIN UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. 37 

doubtedly be so managed as not to become sinful. 
Dut if sin is woven into its very nature, or, in other 
words, if it properly belongs to the class of crimes, 
then no possible circumstances can ji it. Crime 

never Loses its character. It may be palliated, but 
cannot be justified — for in that case, it would not be 
crime. Murder is always murder; theft is always 
theft, and adultery always adultery. There may bo 
circumstances under which killing a human beinc:, 
taking property not our own, and sexual intercourse, 
are lawful ; but no one thinks of applying to these 
acts, when lawful, those names which designate crime. 
Though killing is not always murder, yet murder it- 
self is always murder. That slavery is often wicked, 
is conceded. The question now is, whether there can 
be any force of circumstances or excellence of motives 
that shall divest slavery of its criminal character. 
Has slavery the stability and unchangeableness of 
other crimes, or is its sinfulness only incidental ? Wq 
affirm that its wickedness is innate and inseparable. 
1. It is without a reason. In all cases where par- 
ticular acts, as, for instance, killing a man, are deemed 
innocent, they are so deemed for good and sufficient 
reasons. It must be shown that the killing had not in 
it the elements of murder — that it was done in self- 
defence, or in sudden passion, or by accident. So 
of the taking of property not our own : if it can 
be made to appear that there was an uncontrollable 
necessity for such an appropriation of another's 
goods, and that no felonious purpose was indulged in, 
the case is only one of trespass and not of theft. Kow, 



38 SLAVERY AXD THE OHTECH. 

if the advocates of slavery could show any similar 
reason for the institution, we might regard it as in- 
nocent. Could they show that negroes cannot be 
governed like other men, or that they must be held 
as chattels, or that they are incapable of " consent 
and contract" in relation to service — then slavery 
would stand acquitted. But this they do not attempt, 
because thev know that nothing of the kind exists. 
They know that slavery is a wanton exercise of power, 
and that there is not the least necessity for it. 

2. It is without right. The boundary which sepa- 
rates sin and holiness, is that which separates good 
and evil. The form of virtue, or good rules, may some- 
times be set aside without injury where constitutional 
principles are not infracted. Murder is always mur- 
der, because it is always wrong — it is always an out- 
rage on the constitutional right to life. The slave has 
a natural right to be free, and the taking away of this 
right must be a sin. It is an irreparable loss to the 
slave, and such a loss as no man has a right to inflict. 
There is no compensation in the case. It is not a mere 
quasi wrong, nor is it a substitution of one right for 
another — it is the deliberate crushing of a man into 
a brute. It is the total extinction of right without 
any reason, either pretended or real. The slave being 
by accident of law within the power of the master, 
is kept within that power, not from any necessity, 
but simply from the master's choice. 

3. Dr. Fuller has given us his idea of what is ne- 
cessary to free slavery from its turpitude, and restore 
the institution to pristine purity. But he fails en- 



A SIN UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. 30 

tirely in showing that the institution in its most im- 
proved form has either justice or propriety. Ho 
shows that it might be less wicked than it is — a truth 
none will dispute — but he leaves the question of its 
being wicked at all, wholly out of sight. The sin of 
murder might be enhanced by circumstances of cru- 
elty, and so may that of slavery ; yet, apart from in- 
cidental aggravations of this kind, both acts are crim- 
inal. It is the criminality lying back of these alleged 
abuses that needs an apology, but never finds it. We 
do not dispute that killing twenty men is a greater 
sin than killing one man, but the latter act is just as 
truly murder as if it had been impossible to kill many 
instead of one. The first step in slavery is a crime, 
and no array of circumstances can ever make it inno- 
cent. "We must not overlook an intrinsic evil, be- 
cause there are extrinsic evils connected with it ; and 
no amendment of the latter can at all affect the 
former. 

" Wanton cruelty may be too often practiced by masters, as 
it is by parents ; but this, which is but an occasional incident of 
slavery, should not be exhibited as the prominent evil. This 
may be removed by the influence of humane feelings, and es- 
pecially by Christian principle, but countless evils will still re- 
main, inherent and inseparable from the system." {Slavery 
and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States, by Prof. 
E. A. Andrews,- p. 35.) 

We are not concerned with the abuses of slavery, 
but with slavery itself, which is one of the greatest 
of abuses. It is admitted that murder, robbery and 



40 SLAVERY AXD THE CHURCH. 

adultery may be accompanied by circumstances of 
additional atrocity and guilt, yet these circumstances, 
when wanting, never excuse the original crime. "We 
do not acquit the murderer, because he did not man- 
gle his victim, or the robber, because he did not take 
all the man possessed, or the adulterer, because he 
used neither violence nor artifice. The crime is in 
the act itself, and not in its adjuncts or circumstances ; 
and while the act remains, the sin must remain also. 
4. If slavery be not a sin, per se, then it follows 
that the rights of man are not inherent and inaliena- 
ble. On this supposition, the right to " life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness," is only a conventional 
regulation, dependent upon the accident of legislation, 
and removable at any time without guilt. On this 
hypothesis, to make a man — any man — a chattel, is 
no invasion of his personal or civil rights ; he may 
be thrown into market, or into prison, by the mere 
wantonness of power, and yet no injury is done — he 
has lost no rights, for he had none to lose. But can 
anybody believe that man has no natural rights ? — that 
lie is as destitute of such rights as a stock or a stone ? 
Is not the whole frame-work of civil law declarative 
of natural rights existing in man as man, and is it not 
confessedly the whole object of such law to protect 
these rights % To this question there can be but one 
answer : all know that law is a farce and a usurpation, 
unless it aims to promote the public welfare by care- 
full v guarding the rights of individuals. It follows, 
therefore, that slavery is wrong under all circumstan- 
ces, or right under all circumstances. If wrong is 



A SIN UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. 41 

possible, then is slavery wrong ; hut if not possible, 
then slavery is guiltless. If man has rights to lose, 
slavery takes them away; hut if he has none, of 
coarse, none are taken away. 

5. If slavery may be justified by circumstances, 
then vice and virtue are not immutable in their na- 
tures ; they arc only accidents of things, which may 
or may not belong to them. This supposes that man 
may exist without obligations or rights : that lie may 
have neither duties to perform, nor privileges to enjoy. 
It supp< «es, in fact, that man can, at the same time, 
be man and not man, which is a glaring contradiction. 
AVe cannot limit the doctrine, that slavery is not an 
intrinsic moral evil, to slavery alone ; for if true of 
this, it is equally true of other things. It applies to 
all other men, and makes the invasion of their rights 
a matter of indifference ; they, having the same hu- 
man nature as the slave, can have no rights superior 
to his. But we must go one step further. If rights 
are out of the question here, then are they every- 
where. Natural and personal rig! its fall not alone. 
The whole superstructure of morals is destroyed. Our 
duties to God and man cease to be duties, and there 
is no obligation of any kind whatever, except that of 
mere physical force. Let it be affirmed that slavery 
is not a sin, perse, and it follows inevitably that there 
is no sin. A more glaring violation of right than 
slavery, there cannot be ; and we are compelled to 
deny the existence of moral evil, or acknowledge that 
slavery is one of the highest crimes. 

6. There is another class of apologies, almost too 



42 SLAVERY AND THE CHTJECH. 

futile to be noticed. These are based on the pre- 
existence of the evil, and on the supremacy of the 
State. It is enough to say of all such defences, that 
they will apply just as well to idolatry or murder. 
It is no justification of crime that it has long been 
tolerated ; otherwise, the attempt to reform man from 
inveterate crimes would be an absurdity. JSor is it 
of more consequence that the State countenances or 
requires the commission of wrongs. In other cases, 
we never think of pleading such authority for things 
acknowledged to be sinful. ~No man — no Christian 
man — would deem the requisition of civil govern- 
ment a sufficient excuse for worshiping an idol. The 
whole argument in this direction is too superficial to 
bear a moment's investigation. States or govern- 
ments have no right to enslave men, and what they 
have not a right to do themselves, they cannot author- 
ize individuals to do. But still we are told, " it is not 
a sin under the circumstances." What these circum- 
stances are, that transmute crime into virtue, has been 
abundantly shown, and we have also shown that they 
are no justification at all. The State throws embar- 
rassments in the way of emancipation, therefore slave- 
ry is no crime ! Suppose we change the terms of this 
enthymeme a little : the State throws embarrassments 
in the way of chastity, therefore adultery is no crime. 
"Will the objector admit this ? If not, let him confess 
at once that circumstances cannot change vice into vir- 
tue. He may take which position he chooses, either 
that slavery is a crime, or that it is not a crime ; but 
he. cannot be allowed both — he must not vault from 



A SIN" UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. 43 

one to the other, as this destroys the meaning of lan- 
guage, and confounds all moral distinctions. Murder 
is murder, and theft is theft, under all circumstances ; 
and so of the crime of slavery — if a crime at all, it 
is always a crime. If the State were to hold out the 
strongest inducements to drunkenness and dishonesty 
— nay, if it were to enjoin the commission of these 
crimes, and back the injunction with the heaviest 
penalties — with disfranchisement, confiscation, and 
death — would it be right for us to comply ? Would 
it change, in any respect, the character of these sins? 
By no means. That the State practically forbids 
emancipation, and thereby enjoins a continual robbery 
of the colored man's rights, is beyond dispute. But 
it is just as much beyond dispute in this case as in 
the former, that the difficulties thrown in the way do 
not render innocent the slave-holding which they are 
intended to perpetuate. It is just as much a sin to 
hold a slave, as it would be if the State had done no- 
thing to promote slavery. The essential rights of the 
colored man are born with him ; they do not depend 
upon the State ; he does not acquire them by legisla- 
tion, nor can they be legislated away from him. For 
this reason, it will always be a crime to strip him of 
those rights, no matter what he may gain or lose by 
their possession ; they are his as inalienably as the 
blood in his veins, or the breath in his lungs. 



^ SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER V. 

SLAVERY NOT SANCTIONED BY THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Much stress has been laid on the authority of the 
Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, by the sup- 
porters of slavery. They appear to think that the 
system finds an impregnable defense in the Word of 
God. Their appeal to the Bible, however, is most 
unfortunate for their cause, as no other book in the 
world is so decidedly hostile to oppression, and wrong- 
doing of every kind. But still, as they have chosen 
this arbitrament, they should have whatever advan- 
tage it may afford. If it can possibly be shown that 
a book, which teaches all right to be done to all men, 
does, nevertheless, sanction slavery, slave-holders are 
justly entitled to the benefit of such showing, and 
very much need it. 

It should be understood in the outset, that the Old 
Testament is not, in all respects, a standard of morals 
for the present day. The New Testament has revised 
the ethical code of the Old, and several things, once 
allowed, are now prohibited. As instances of the 
kmd, we mention, 1. Wars, both offensive and de- 
fensive; 2. Polygamy; 3. Concubinage; 4. Putting 
children to death ; 5. Bills of divorce ; 6. Slaying of 
murderers by their relatives. These practices, how- 
ever tolerated in Patriarchal and Jewish times, are 
inanifestly contrary to both the spirit and the letter 



NOT SANCTIONED BY TTTE OLD TESTAMENT. 45 

of the Gospel. Hence, it does not by any means fol- 
low, as a necessary consequence, that the recognition 
of slavery, by Moses, gives it a place among the in- 
stitutions of Christianity. 

Servitude was tolerated and regulated by law un- 
der the Mosaic institute ; but servitude is not slavery. 
There is a wide difference between any form of mere 
servitude, and slavery. The servant may have the 
rights of a man in several respects; he may own 
property, have wife and children, and be regarded as 
a man. But the slave can own nothing, acquire 
nothing, and be nothing, before the law, but a chat- 
tel. It is further to be conceded, that servants were 
bought and sold by the Jews ; yet it does not appear 
that such servants were regarded as chattels personal, 
or that the traffic in this species of property was ever 
extensive. Further than this, no concession can be 
made. The first, and most important element of 
slavery — that of entire subjection to the master — 
did not exist among them. JSTo Hebrew was permit- 
ted to usurp the place of God. Servants there were, 
but no slaves. I shall here set down some of the cir- 
cumstances which distinguished servitude as it pre- 
vailed among the Israelites, and which made slavery, 
in the proper sense of the word, an utter impossi- 
bility. 

1. Their government was a Theocracy. God was 
supreme governor. Hence, no man could at any time 
claim to rule according to his own will. Under such 
a system of laws, the rights of conscience are always 



46 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCfL 

protected. But it is far otherwise where the Higher 
Law is scouted, and the will of man is made the only 
rule of duty. Slavery was excluded from the Jewish 
polity by this feature of its constitution, as effectually 
as it could have been by a specific enactment. 

2. The whole scope of the Mosaic institute was in 
opposition to the inequality and degradation peculiar 
to slavery. The law of brotherhood prevailed every- 
where, uprooting and destroying that aristocratic 
pride, which is the foundation of slavery. The peo- 
ple were taught to respect man, and to recognize in 
every man a brother. Depressed he might be, but 
he was not to be cast from the pale of humanity. 
Not so with slavery. The slave is reduced to the 
condition of a brute, and the law makes no provision 
for his elevation to the rank from which he has been 
degraded. The Jew saw in his servant a brother, for 
whom he was in duty bound to provide, and who was 
to be, with him, a sharer of immortality. His ser- 
vant was, equally with himself, a creature of God, 
and entitled to every kindness. 

3. The Jewish polity was a system of mercy. Its 
humanizing influence was felt in a thousand ways, on 
both masters and servants. It taught men to live for 
eternity, and not for time. It inspired hopes of a 
better inheritance, where the vices and ills of this 
world should be unknown. Every Jew, properly in- 
structed, was spiritual, and held all his worldly pos- 
sessions as a tenant at will of the Most High. It was 
his duty to perfect holiness in the fear of God. His 
religion, if fully carried out, cut off all sinful indul- 



NOT SANCTIONED BY THE OLD TESTAMENT. 4:7 

gences, and prevented all oppression. It was based 
on the law of love, as well as on the law of purity. 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' 7 {Lev. 
xix: IS.) 

4. All servants were to be taught the principles of 
religion, and admitted to all the rights and privileges 
of divine worship. The master was specially charged 
to bring his servants with him when he appeared be- 
fore the Lord. {See Gen. xvii : 12, and Dent, xvi : 
9-14.) 

5. In the year of jubilee all servants were to go 
free. This applied, not only to servants of the He- 
brew stock, but to all others. " Ye shall hallow the 
year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land, to 
all the inhabitants thereof." {Lev. xxv : 10.) 

6. Servants were permitted to live together in 
families, and their domestic relations were held sa- 
cred. {See Lev. xix : 20.) 

7. The servant who was abused by his master, was 
to be set free. {See Mood, xxi : 26, 27.) 

8. The master who violated the chastity of his 
female servant, was obliged to marry her, or let her 
go free. {See ffl&od. xxi: 8-11, Dent, xxi : 10-14.) 

9. The servant who escaped from his master, was 
not to be delivered up. This regulation alone Avas 
sufficient to protect the servant from everything anal- 
ogous to slavery. This is understood by some as 
applying only to those servants who escaped from the 
surrounding idolatrous nations, and sought a refuge 
among the Jews. But there is nothing in the passage 
itself, nor in the context, that favors such a construe- 



48 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

tion. It is a meaning brought to the text, and not 
one deduced from it. The words are plain : 

" Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which 
is escaped from his master unto thee : he shall dwell with thee, 
even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of 
thy gates, where it liketh him best : thou shalt not oppress 
him." (Deut. xxiii: 15, 16.) 

It is said that this must be restricted to servants 
from foreign nations, because it would be unjust if 
applied to Hebrew servants. Such an objection to a 
liberal construction of the text, is disrespectful — it 
gives the Israelite permission to wrong the foreigner, 
by keeping his servant, and obliges him to deal fairly 
only with his own countrymen. If there was injus- 
tice in not restoring the servant of the Hebrew, there 
was equal injustice in not restoring the' servant of one 
belonging to a neighboring tribe. But the truth is, 
the servant, belong to whom he might, was not to be 
given up. "When so oppressed that conscience and 
safety demanded flight, he was permitted to flee, and 
thus escape a tyranny that would have crushed his 
manhood. This compelled masters to treat servants 
well, and secure the continuance of their services by 
kindness, rather than by force. It placed masters and 
servants on much the same terms that prevail in free 
countries, where labor is hired. The employer must 
pay well, and demean himself correctly, or his help 
will leave him. He is not, in any case, the owner of 
the men, but the buyer of their services, and the re- 
lation may be dissolved when it is deemed necessary 
by either party. So, we think, the Israelitish servant, 



NOT SANCTIONED BY THE OLD TESTAMENT. 4:9 

■whom the master was bound to love as himself, had 
the privilege of going free, when conscience and 
honor demanded it. That the servant from another 
nation was to be accorded this right, none can dispute ; 
and that the right might be equally important to the 
servant of a Hebrew, is as little questionable. Under 
this regulation, oppression could reach only a certain 
extent. Masters were dependent upon their good 
behavior for the retention of their servants, as all 
masters ought to be. Men might sell their services, 
and the services of their children, as thousands prefer 
to do in all countries ; but the law would not allow 
the contract to run always — it must expire at the 
year of jubilee. And, even while the obligation of 
■service remained, it was to be forfeited by specific 
acts of abuse, and might be terminated at the discre- 
tion of the servant. In short, provision was made for 
humanity. The master could not oblige his servant 
to violate God's law, nor to become a brute. The 
servant was to be a willing servant. Nothing like 
constraint is authorized, and all oppression is strictly 
forbidden. Those who chose servitude could only re- 
main servants upon the ignominious condition of 
having their ears bored through with an awl. 

Let those who object to the view we have taken of 
the foregoing passage, consider — 

1. That the spirit and letter of the Old Testament 
were vastly elevated above the institutions of pagan- 
ism, and that it is therefore safer to follow the upward 
tendency of the former, than it is the downward 

analogies of the latter. Heathenism would not have 
s 



50 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

allowed the servant to escape ; neither would it have 
afforded a jubilee, in which he might go out without 
an escape. A system which provided for the release 
of all, at a stated time, may be supposed to have ad- 
mitted of the release of the oppressed at any time. 

2. That servitude, like divorce or polygamy, was 
not a part of the Mosaic religion, but an evil, tolera- 
ted under an imperfect dispensation, and because the 
hearts of the people were hard. Hence, all regulations 
on the subject are to be construed against servitude, 
and not in favor of it. The bill of divorce was al- 
lowed, but it was not intended to promote the separa- 
tion of man and wife ; so the holding of servants was 
permitted, but it was not designed to make bondage 
an unconditional and interminable state. 

3. That to afford protection to fugitives from other 
masters, and not to those from Jewish masters, was 
most unequal ; giving to the foreigner a privilege 
denied to the Jew : whereas, there is abundant evi- 
dence that the Israelitish servant was to be treated 
with special tenderness. 

4. That the Jews were all fugitives when these 
precepts were delivered — having tied from Egyptian 
servitude ; and that rules made for such a people, on 
the treatment of fugitives, would naturally be of the 
most comprehensive character. There was, as yet, 
no servants among them — their laws were only pros- 
pective — and it may well be supposed, that He who 
led a nation of bondmen to liberty, would teach them 
to be the protectors of all other bondmen, and espe- 
cially those of their own country. 



NOT SANCTIONED BY THE OLD TESTAMENT. 51 

5. That the exodus of the Israelites was in fact 
nothing but an assumption of this very right to go 
forth and be free, at their own option, when compel- 
led by the obligations of duty. This great national 
act of self-emancipation was to constitute an example 
for all the oppressed. In no other way could man be 
man, when the voice of duty called. 

6. That the Jew was always required to remember 
that he had been a bondman, and this for the avowed 
purpose of softening his treatment toward those in 
his service. We may safely conclude, also, that this 
remembrance was intended to prepare him to accord 
to his servants the same right to escape, which him- 
self had enjoyed in so marvelous a manner. 

Now, we contend that the advocates of slavery, if 
they mean to avail themselves of the Old Testament, 
must use its authority in support of such a system as 
we have here described. But this system has scarcely 
any resemblance to American Slavery. The argu- 
ment, therefore, is entirely worthless. Even if the 
servitude provided for by the laws of Moses had not 
been canceled by a new and better dispensation, it 
could have afforded no countenance to the diabolical 
system of slavery established in this country. But 
should we concede all, the argument could do them 
no good. It would be just as conclusive to adduce 
the Mosaic law in favor of polygamy, in order to justi- 
fy a plurality of wives, as it is to adduce it in support 
of any type of slavery. If the authority is good in 
one case, it is in another. Kor do we by this weaken 



52 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

the authority of such parts of the Mosaic code as have 
not been repealed. What has been confirmed by 
Christ, and adopted into the New Testament, is obli- 
gatory ; but all the rest is annulled. The law of cir- 
cumcision, though vital to the Jew, is not binding 
upon us. And so of the whole Jewish ritual, and all 
the other laws not strictly of a moral character. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SLAVERY NOT SANCTIONED BY THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

We must abide the teaching of the New Testament. 
If its authority is clearly on the side of slavery, then 
slavery — whatever we may think of it — ought to 
be tolerated in the Church. If He whose kingdom 
was not of this world — who came not to destroy 
men's lives, but to save them — and who commanded 
his disciples to love one another as he had loved them, 
did, nevertheless, sanction chattel slavery with all its 
horrors, then we must bow to the mandate, and place 
it among the most inscrutable mysteries of Divine 
Providence. We know not as any serious attempt 
has been made to press the words of Christ into the 
support of slavery. It would be difficult to find a 
single text in the Evangelists that could with decency 
be used for such a purpose. Slavery does not appear 
to have flourished in Judea at the time of the Advent, 



NOT SANCTIONED BY THE NEW TESTAMENT. 53 

and consequently the personal ministry of Christ af- 
forded few or no opportunities for discussing the sub- 
ject. It was not his practice to introduce foreign 
vices for animadversion and reproof. lie laid down 
rules for all virtue, and interdicted all sin, but con- 
fined the illustration and application of his precepts 
chiefly to things under his immediate, personal ob- 
servation. We shall, therefore, find the argument 
resting mainly on some expressions in the apostolic 
Epistles. The apostles went abroad, and saw slavery 
in all its forms ; they wrote to Churches living where 
slavery abounded, and if the system was worthy of 
adoption, or countenance, or condemnation, we may 
reasonably expect to find it so treated in their letters. 
In this expectation we are not disappointed. The 
references to servitude are few, but exceedingly clear. 
The following passage may be taken as an instance : 

" Art thou called being a servant ? care not for it ; but if 
thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called 
in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's free man : likewise, 
also, he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are 
bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men." (1. 
Cor. vii, 21-23.) 

This shows that Christianity utterly annihilates the 
slave system — the servant is so far made free by his 
conversion, that he may look upon all that remains of 
bondage as of no importance, and " care not for it." 
He is Christ's free max, and is forbidden to be the 
servant of men. That is, he is free to obey Christ in 
all things, and not permitted to serve men in any 
thing contrary to the law of Christ. The course of 



54 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

the apostle's argument here shows that we have not 
misapprehended nor overstated the matter. He was 
teaching the Corinthians to abide as they were called : 
the circumcised in their circumcision, and the uncir- 
cumcised in their uncircumcision ; the married as 
married, and the unmarried as unmarried. He would 
have them understand that the gospel did not depend 
for its efficiency on any of these external things, and 
that by their translation into the kingdom of God, 
they had gained a position which enabled them to look 
down upon all worldly circumstances with compara- 
tive indifference. The servant of man had become 
not only a servant, but "an heir of God, and joint 
heir with Christ. " One elevated to such immortal 
honors and immunities, if claimed as the slave of man, 
might well " care not for it. " It could do him no 
harm, because he was so fully brought under a higher 
law, and into the protection of a greater Sovereign, 
that all human authority was paralyzed, except in 
things lawful to be done. 

There is another passage which, if possible, shows 
still more plainly this independence of the converted 
servant. 

" Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters ac- 
cording to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of 
your heart, as unto Christ. Not with eye service, as men- 
pleasers ; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God 
from the heart ; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, 
and not to men : knowing that whatsoever good thing any man 
doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be 
bond or free." {-Eph., vi, 5-8.) 



STOT SANCTIONED BY THE NEW TESTAMENT. 55 

Here the human master's authority is completely 
absorbed, so to speak, in the will of God. The ser- 
vant is not allowed to consider himself the servant of 
man, but the servant of God. "As the servants of 
Christ, doing- the will of God from the heart " 
this is obviously not a rule for a chattel personal — a 
thing ; but for a man in the highest state of religious 
and moral freedom. No service incompatible with 
the holiness of God, was to be tolerated. The man 
was to reckon himself as doing service only to Christ— 
thus implying that lie sustained an infinitely higher 
relation than to man, and was under supreme obliga- 
tion, not to his master, but to his master's Master. 
Both servant and master were made to feel that they 
equally had a Master, who was God, and to whom 
they must give account for all their deeds. There 
could be no substitution in the case ; one could not 
answer for another — each must do right or perish. 
God was before them, and his law was the only law 
of both master and servant. Such precepts leave no 
room for slavery, unless slavery is holy ; it must be as 
pure as God, or it cannot have the slightest authority. 
The servant has to do every moment with the law of 
one who forbids sin, and if all the men in the universe 
were to command him to sin, he ought to spurn their 
authority and obey his God. But waiving further 
comment on particular pa we shall pr< 

a few general observations, which will furnish the 
reader with a wider view of the subject. If slavery 
was incorporated with Christianity by Christ, or his 
apostles, the question is settled — we have no right to 



56 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

innovate. But if they rejected it, we ought to do the 
same — if they brought it into the Church, we have 
no right to expel it. 

That the apostles did not admit slavery or slave- 
holders into the Church, is evident to us, from the fol- 
lowing considerations : 

1. They did not, because they could not. The na- 
ture and constitution of the Church would not admit 
of it. In the first place, slavery is a civil institution, 
but the Church is a spiritual institution, and could 
not incorporate this element of the civil law. If 
there was slavery in the Church, it must have been 
spiritual slavery, for the Church had no civil code by 
which to uphold slavery. In the next place, the 
Church is holy, but slavery is unholy, therefore, it 
could not come into the Church by apostolic sanction. 

2. All the apostolic letters were addressed to spir- 
itual communities — " holy brethren," whose rule of 
living was universal righteousness, and whose mem- 
bers were all equally free in Christ, and on a level 
with each other — each and all" standing by faith, and 
by faith only. To reach this point, where " all are 
one," and to be a member of the "communion of 
saints," for whom the apostles wrote, it was necessary 
to renounce every worldly and social distinction, for 
in Christ there could be " neither Jew nor Greek, nei- 
ther bond nor free, neither male nor female." Those 
who think the apostles introduced chattel slavery into 
this sublime brotherhood, must have a taste for the 
marvelous. We could as soon believe that Mahomet 
made a journey to heaven on the beast Alborak, 



NOT SANCTIONED BY TTIE NEW TESTAMENT. 57 

3. A slave, be it remembered, " is a person who is 
wholly subject to the will of another" human being. 
But no Christian can be thus bound. Hence, the 
slave-law must of necessity be a dead letter wherever 
Christianity prevails. For all Christians acknowledge 
God as their Master. If the slave-holder could get 
into the Church, his entrance there would strip him 
of every particle of that unrighteous authority with 
which the civil law had invested him. In the world, 
men can hold slaves, but not in Christ — not in the 
Church. The apostles did not write for the world, but 
for the Church, and hence they gave no directions for 
slave-holding. 

4. The duties enjoined on believers are wholly in- 
compatible with slavery. "Let each esteem other 
better than themselves" — that is, the master esteem 
the slave better than himself. " In honor preferring 
one another" — that is, the master counting his slave 
more honorable than himself, and conceding to him, 
on all occasions, the place of honor. " Therefore, all 
things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto 
you, do ye even so unto them" — that is, if you, being 
a slave, would prefer liberty, grant it to your slaves. 
Now who does not see that these precepts effectually 
annihilate the system of slavery ? And yet no man 
can be a Christian without obeying all these com- 
mands, and many others equally at variance with the 
slave-law — a law which is nothing better with us 
than it was with the old Romans, who held their slaves 
"pro nuttis, pro mortwis, pro qicadrvpi <///"/^•" , — " as 
nothing, as dead, as quadrupeds." Xo wonder that 



58 SLAVEEY AND THE CHURCH. 

the Saviour and his apostles, after giving such pre- 
cepts, did not give directions for the emancipation of 
slaves. It would have been just as absurd in them 
to do so, as it would, after commanding parents to 
" bring up their children in the nurture and admoni- 
tion of the Lord," to add a precept against infanticide. 
5. The injunctions given to masters and servants, 
(JEJjph. vi, 5-9, and elsewhere,) neither afford counte- 
nance to slavery, nor proof that slave-holding was 
introduced into the Church, under any modification. 
It is true, the words doulos and kurios are used, and 
if we can make one mean a chattel slave, we can make 
the other mean God. One of these terms is often 
applied to slaves, and the other quite as often applied 
to Christ. But who does not know that in the Scrip- 
tures words often acquire a new and very different 
meaning. If we adhere to the literal and classical 
use of terms, we shall land not only in slavery, but in 
popery, and even in Manicheism. The Papist renders 
<rouro sgn ro du\xa fxou — " this is my body," literally, and 
makes out transubstantiation. When the apostle says, 
" I know that in me, (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no 
good thing," we have only to adhere to this excess- 
ive literalism to reach the Manichean notion, that all 
evil resides in matter. If we choose to be as absurd 
in our interpretation, and make the apostle use terms 
precisely as a heathen would have used them, we may 
possibly make him an authority for slave-holding. 
The fact that commands are given to servants and 
masters to discharge faithfully their respective duties, 
does by no means prove that these servants and mas- 



NOT SANCTIONED EY THE NEW TESTA^tENT. 59 

ters stood to each other in the relation of slaves arid 
slave-owners. This would be to suppose that a wick- 
ed civil institution of idolatrous heathen, was adopted 
into the holy, spiritual Church of the true God. A 
supposition so monstrous and improbable, that we can 
scarcely conceive how it ever entered the mind of any 
man having the slightest acquaintance with Christian- 
ity. Servants there might be, masters there might 
be, but the men who sustained these relations in the 
Church were " new creatures ;" old things had passed 
away, and both master and servant had come under 
a new law, to which chattel-slavery was unknown — ■ 
the law of justice and equality, the law of love and 
brotherly kindness. 

6. If slavery was introduced into the Church by 
the apostles, it was introduced with all its attributes, 
its buying and selling, its whipping and killing, its 
lust and degradation. The institution was transplant- 
ed entire, if at all, except so far as it might be regu- 
lated by the few directions given to servants and mas- 
ters. This would have left Paul at liberty to purchase 
or sell any of his brethren who were slaves — it left 
the whole Church open to the slave traffic, for there 
is not one word said in the apostolic Epistles against 
buying men, women and children, with an intention to 
enslave them. AVe leave the candid to judge whether 
it is likely that so radical a reform as Christianity 
would participate in such a vile business. Indeed, it 
seems to us that were the Scriptures much more sus- 
ceptible of being perverted to the support <»t' slavery 
than they are, both the head and the heart of every 



60 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH, 

Christian must instantly repel the enormity, and stamp 
all pro-slavery renderings as utterly spurious. 

7. The most that can be made of the apostle's doc- 
trine and practice is, that he exhorted those who had 
servants to treat them well, and those who were ser- 
vants, to be faithful to their masters — duties which, 
to say the least, are quite as applicable to non-slave- 
holders as to slave-holders, and to freemen as to 
slaves. And we can see no reason for the sweeping 
inference, that the apostle had, contrary to the spirit 
of the Gospel which he preached, introduced into the 
Church the horrible, blood-stained system of chattel 
slavery — a system every way as uncongenial with 
Christianity as idolatry itself. The language employed 
on this subject carries with it internal evidence that 
these were hired servants : " Masters, give unto your 
servants that which is just and equal." This is not a 
manner of speaking known to the slave code. 

8. But slavery and slave-holding in the Church are 
impossible, because Christianity is conservative of 
human rights. The master may rob his fellow man 
of liberty, and get the law of man to sanction the foul 
deed, but he cannot be accommodated in this way by 
the law of God. On entering the Church, he must 
himself become a servant. Here the unrighteous 
grasp of human power must yield to a higher author- 
ity. Men cannot carry a slave even into the kingdom 
of Great Britain, for the moment a slave sets foot on 
British soil, he is as free as his master ; and how much 
less can they bring a slave into the kingdom of God ! 



NEVER AN ACT OF BENEVOLENCE. CI 



CHAPTER VII. 

SLAVERY NEVER AN ACT OF BENEVOLENCE. 

One of the most specious, but futile, arguments in 
favor of slavery, is derived from its sirpposed benev- 
olence under certain circumstances. Men who ac- 
knowledge the institution to be wicked, still insist that 
it ought to be tolerated as an act of mercy to the 
slave. In their estimation, to obey a wicked law is 
not necessarily a crime, " because the relation between 
master and slave may be such that the law of love 
itself may forbid emancipation." (Dr. Bond, Chris. 
Adv. and Jour., Aug. 18, 1852.) This is sheer as- 
sumption. There is no possibility that any such rela- 
tion should exist. If this assumption be admitted, the 
argument is at an end, for the law of love must be 
kept ; but the admission is impossible, and for the fol- 
lowing reasons : 

1. If the law of love forbids emancipation, it be- 
comes, in so far, identical with the slave law, which 
is an evil law — hence, one of these two things must 
result, either the law of love becomes evil, or the evil 
law of slavery becomes good. But neither of these 
things can ever happen, and consequently the law of 
love can never forbid emancipation. 

2. If the law of love enjoins slavery as a preven- 
tive of greater evil, then' it follows that a Christian is 
bound to do some evil in order to keep wicked men 



62 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

from doing more evil. He must hold a slave — that 
is, reduce a man to a chattel — lest other men should 
not only reduce the man to a chattel, but heap upon 
him additional injuries, such as cruelty, separation 
from his family, and so forth. On this principle, if 
the law should require the master to put out his slave's 
eyes, under a threat that if he did not comply, the 
slave's eyes should not only be put out by somebody 
else, but his hands and feet should be cut off, — the 
master would be bound to obey ! The same principle 
would oblige us to kill one man — to commit one 
murder — in order to prevent ten other murders being 
committed. But no Christian can admit such a hor- 
rible obligation, and, consequently, no Christian can 
admit that he is obliged to deprive a man of some of 
his rights, in order to keep the man from greater 
wrongs. 

3. The slave law, being essentially evil, can never 
produce good. The heavenly fruit of brotherly kind- 
ness never grows on such a satanic root of bitterness. 
" Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?" 
To keep the slave law, even in its best form, is to be 
cruel and unjust, because it takes away God-given 
rights — ■ but it may not be to reach the utmost depths 
of cruelty and injustice. Some forms of piracy are 
worse than others, but does it therefore follow that 
any form of piracy is tolerable ? If there is kindness 
in robbing a man of a thousand dollars, in order to 
prevent his being robbed of ten thousand, it is such 
kindness as no honest man can show. It is a kind- 
ness which God has forbidden, and which none but 



NEVER AN ACT OF BENEVOLENCE. 63 

wicked men and devils should ever dare to practice. 
Yet, this is the boasted law of love, as it obtains be- 
tween the slave and the master — the latter robs, but 
takes not everything, as some fiercer robber might do. 

4. The relation between master and slave is the 
same as between any other two men. There is no 
different code of ethics for the adjustment of this re- 
lation — no rules of duty applicable here, and not 
elsewhere. Men, standing in this relation, have all 
the rights and immunities belonging to other men — 
nothing more, nothing less. The direction to masters 
is, to " give to their servants that which is just and 
equal ;" not what is just and equal according to the 
slave law, but what is just and equal between man 
and man — between brethren, children of the same 
Heavenly Father. There is nothing in this relation 
to make it necessary to keep up the relation. The 
slave may suffer more, if he be not still enslaved by 
his former master, but this, as we have shown, does 
not authorize that master to take away any portion of 
his rights. He may not obey a wicked law, and de- 
prive a man of his liberty, for fear some one else 
should take advantage of the same law, and deprive 
the man of still more. 

5. Such an operation of the law of love would be 
contrary to the genius of Christianity. Restoration 
is the doctrine of religion. When Zaccheus was con- 
verted, he did not propose to retain the property that 
he had taken wrongfully from others, and use it faith- 
fully for their good, but he promised to restore it, and 
even more, to the original owners. Kow, the slave 



64 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

Las been robbed of his liberty, and the master is bound 
to make restitution. Had the robbery consisted in 
taking money, all will see that Christianity would de- 
mand the restoration of the money, as far as possible, 
on the part of the repentant transgressor. But where 
the offence consists in taking what is infinitely more 
valuable than money — in stealing the man himself, 
how much more evident is it that the man should be 
restored to himself! 

6. In another important particular, this modified 
slave-holding is at war with the gospel. It is not the 
way to produce reform. The wicked institutions of 
society are to be renounced. Slavery being a griev- 
ous wrong, the Christian is not to participate in it, 
under the delusive impression that he shall thereby 
reform the institution. He might, on the same prin- 
ciple, continue gambling and horse-racing, with the 
hope of introducing more humanity into those corrupt 
practices. 

7. It is said that the slave, if liberated, will be 
snatched by the slave-trader, and doomed to bondage. 
And is he not already in bondage ? what has he more 
to dread ? and what good does the law of love confer 
on him by forbidding his emancipation ? Nor are we 
clear that the danger of a re-enslavement is not alto- 
gether exaggerated. There are thousands of free 
blacks in all the slave States, and we have yet to learn 
that slave-holders, generally, are so abominably want- 
ing in common honesty as to try to enslave free 
colored men. The pretence of keeping the slave in 
bonds, in order to keep him from the clutches of the 



f 
NEVEB AX ACT OF BENEVOLENCE. G5 

slave-trader, is a miserable fallacy — nay, horrid mock- 
ery of tlie sacred virtue of kindness. It is like shoot- 
ing a man through the heart, to save his life. It is 
plundering a man of all he has, even to his manhood, 
for the sole purpose of saving him from robbery ! Oh 
shame, where is thy blush ! This foul, total robbery 
— this unexampled and unmeasured thieving, is per- 
petrated in the name of justice and mercy. It is just 
as much worse than common robbery, as it is more 
extensive in degree, and more false in character. 
There is no need of any man's falling into the hands 
of a slave-trader, unless he is a slave — a freeman can 
always keep clear of those desperadoes ; but a slave 
must follow the laws of property, and be sold at auc- 
tion, or private sale, whenever the master chooses, 
and to whomsoever he chooses. In case of insolven- 
cy, he must be sold, like any other property, to the 
highest bidder. Such an one may be caught up by 
the slave-dealer, but not the man who has free papers 
in his pocket — who is liable for no master's debts, and, 
withal, is on his way, post haste, to the land of the 
free. Throwing a man into the crater of a volcano, 
to guard him against spontaneous combustion ; or, into 
the depths of the ocean, to keep him from the patter- 
ing rain-drops of a summer shower, would be wisdom 
and mercy, compared with slave-holding as a remedy 
for the evils of emancipation. 

8. If the law forbids emancipation, it forbids our 
" ceasing to do evil.*' For the law which binds the 
slave is admitted to be " evil, only evil, and that con- 
tinually." To keep the slave bound, this evil law 



G6 SLAVERY AND TIIE CHURCH. 

must be kept in force against him, and we must con- 
tinue to do evil, notwithstanding the express command 
of God to the contrary. Thus does this absurd at- 
tempt to make the law of love subservient to slave- 
holding, not only array us in open hostility to heaven, 
but it makes us miserable tools of the most depraved 
human legislation. 

9. Again, if the law of love forbids emancipation, 
it sanctions the perpetual degradation of the slave, in 
opposition to all the elevating tendencies of the gos- 
pel. It is the design of religion to banish all unright- 
eousness and tyranny from the earth, but this coales- 
cence of the Church with slave-holding stops the 
work of reform, and converts the means of freedom 
into an engine of oppression. And wherefore ? Why, 
simply to mitigate the sufferings of the slave for a 
time. This may be an opiate, but it is not a remedy. 
And it is a very costly opiate. To eternize the evil 
for the sake of lessening it in some degree, is a foolish 
bargain — such as neither love nor wisdom can ever 
make. 

10. But then nothing permanent is gained. The 
Christian slave-master may backslide, or become 
bankrupt, or die, and in either case what security has 
the slave of continued good treatment ? In a moment, 
all power to keep the slave from the auction block 
may forever be lost, and love, so far from forbidding 
emancipation, dictates that the present moment be 
seized for that purpose — that emancipation be instant, 
lest the night of death, or of sin, or of misfortune, 
come and prevent the good work. Love cannot coun- 



NEVER AN ACT OF BENEVOLENCE. 07 

sel delay, in a matter of justice, especially where, by 
delay, all hope of justice perishes. And yet, we arc 
gravely told, that, " to recpiire emancipation as a con- 
dition of Church fellowship, would be to require men 
to commit sin — to violate the obligations of human- 
ity and mercy, in order to enter the Church.'' As 
well commit sin by ceasing to blaspheme. The liar 
who speaks the truth, the thief who ceases to steal, 
and the murderer who ceases to kill, are just as much 
" violating the obligations of humanity and mercy," 
as is the man who sets his slaves free. If emancipa- 
tion is sin, then it is a sin to be honest. 

11. To regard slavery as a mercy, is a very foolish 
assumption. It may be that it is mercy for one man 
to hold slaves in comparison to what it would be for 
another to hold them ; but this supposes that they 
must be held as slaves by somebody. It takes for 
granted that emancipation is impossible. But we de- 
ny that emancipation is impossible. The under-ground 
rail-road is doing too good a business — the odious 
fugitive slave law has too frequently been had in 
requisition, to leave any doubt on the public mind as 
to the practicability of freedom for the slave. It will 
require a pretty stringent police, to enforce such an 
act of mercy, as keeping a man and his family chat- 
tels forever on one side of the Ohio river, while they 
might be enjoying liberty on the other side. Of such 
mercy as this no man would wish to be a partaker. 
The slave will quickly plant himself in a land of free- 
dom, if the sanctimonious, Judas-like kindness of his 
master does not prevent him. If the law of love, as 



68 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

expounded by those who fatten npon the unpaid toil 
of these sable sons and daughters of Africa, does not 
prove a mill-stone around the fugitive's neck, to sink 
him in the sea of despotism, he will be quickly free, 
in spite of dangers or difficulties. This pious slave- 
holding is the most horrible of all, because it is so ev- 
idently hypocritical. Every body sees it is " stealing 
the livery of heaven to serve the devil in." We do 
not dispute that some slave-holders are worse than 
others, but this does not prove that any are good. 
ISTo man can hold slaves without doing them wrong. 
He must deprive them of rights which God has made 
inalienably theirs, and this deprivation is necessarily 
a sin. It is this taking away of sacred rights, which 
gives to the American slave-law its sinful character, 
and whoever consents to hold a man under this law, 
is guilty of sanctioning and enforcing the crime which 
the law ordains. To hold the man as an act of mer- 
cy is impossible, except upon the assumed and silly 
hypothesis, that he must always be a slave. 

12. It is supposed that slave-holding must be an act 
of mercy, because the motives of some who hold slaves 
are kind. But good motives are no justification of a 
bad act. One man robs you to get money to pay an 
honest debt, and one murders you to prevent your 
injuring another person — the first may be better than 
a common robber, and the second better than a com- 
mon murderer, but neither of them has done right ; 
the one is still a robber, and the other still a murderer. 
So it is with slave-holders. The man who keeps slaves 
for gain is probably worse than the man who keeps 



NEVER AN ACT OF BENEVOLENCE. CO 

tliem from the mistaken notion of mercy, but both are 
veritable slave-holders, and guilty of robbing a fellow- 
being of his God-given rights. ^Neither of these are 
fit for Church membership. 

It should be understood at once and forever, that 
slavery is one of those things for which right motives 
cannot exist. It belongs to the category of crimes, 
and whatever the motive may be, the act is always bad. 

But we are told that " it is not the abstract idea of 
slavery that characterizes slave-holding." (Ante, p. 
55.) In this lies one of the fundamental errors of 
our opponents. They will have it that we should 
look to the motives of the act in order to determine 
its moral character. In our judgment, this is just 
as wise as it would be to look into the motives which 
lead to other great crimes. Good motives may ex- 
tenuate the fault, in some degree, but they can never 
justify it. 

They concede that the act is bad when the mo- 
tive is bad, but in this they have totally overlooked 
the character of slavery. They might just as well 
have said that idolatry is bad when the motives are bad. 
This view makes slavery a good and useful institution, 
if properly maintained. It is, in short, the high-toned 
southern view of the subject, combined with that 
species of denunciation which most southern men 
exercise towards what they call the evils of slavery. 
This gives us, we suppose, the sentiments of the ad- 
vocates of religious slave-holding on this important 
subject. They are not opposed to slavery, but mi ly 
to the evils of slavery. They dislike American 



TO SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 

slavery very much, but, bad as it is, they are anx- 
ious that the Church shall still practice it. They 
would even have no general rule on the subject, 
because it is so difficult to discriminate between those 
who hold slaves from good and those who hold them 
from bad motives. And in this we shall not differ 
with them — for if bona fide slavery is to be in the 
Church, it is hardly worth while to discriminate be- 
tween the motives which inflict the abomination upon 
us. If crime there must be in the Church, we care 
little from what source it comes. 

13. It is further claimed that the law of love re- 
quires slave-holding, in order to prevent the separation 
of families. It is said that husbands and wives, pa- 
rents and children, have no other means of remaining 
together, but to remain in bondage. But it must be 
borne in mind that husband and wife are terms un- 
known to the slave code, and unregarded in practice. 

Whatever the Church may recognize in the case, 
slave marriages are not known in law, and conse- 
quently, there can be no security for the family com- 
pact while the parties remain slaves. So far as the 
law is concerned, no separation is possible, for no 
legal union was ever allowed — nothing but promis- 
cuous concubinage. And even this wretched condi- 
tion the Church is wholly powerless to maintain. The 
slave is property, and must follow the laws of prop- 
erty, whatever may become of his so-called wife and 
reputed children. The question now is two-fold ; first, 
whether this precarious relation is worth preserving 
at the awful price of perpetual bondage ; second, 



NEVER AN ACT OF BENEVOLENCE. 71 

whether the separation incident to emancipation will 
greater than that incident to slavery. AY r c take 
the negative of both. It is even doubtful whether 
the Church has a moral right to many slaves — she 
must exact of them promises which they have no 
power to keep. The husband may be sold the next 
hour after his marriage, and never see his wife more ; 
how can such a man " comfort, honor, and keep" his 
wife "in sickness and in health"? And how can 
the wife " obey, honor, serve, and keep" her husband, 
in sickness and health, to the end of life 2 The fact 
is, the marriage ceremony is profaned, and the Church 
exacts a lie whenever she repeats it over slaves. She 
might as well marry cattle. The State intends con- 
cubinage, and nothing more — here the Church must 
rest, and the display of her sacred ceremonies is but 
solemn mockery. And yet we are told that the " min- 
isters of the Methodist Episcopal Church solemnize 
these rites as readily among colored as white persons, 
imposing the same obligations, and exacting the same 
promises." {Chris. Adv. cmd Jour., ZVbv, 10, 1852.) 
Some separation of families, thus held together, 
there may be, in consequence of emancipation, but 
it ends with one generation ; whereas, to keep them 
together, under such circumstances, if it could be 
<! >ne, would entail on all successive generations, the 
guilt and contingency peculiar to slave families. 
Slavery renders men incompetent to marriage and 
there is no way to throw oft" the incompetency, but 
to throw off that which occasions it. [f separation 
were confined to emancipation, t. i would 



72 SLAVERY AND THE CHTRCH. 

be varied, but it is not ; and it is onr opinion that 
the domestic slave-trade, the insolvencies, the capri- 
ces, the speculations, and the necessities of slave-hold- 
ers, will produce a thousand times more rending of 
" marriage obligations and parental ties," than would 
be produced by sending the slaves to a free State. 
It is objected that many of the slaves are not in a 
condition to be emancipated — infancy, old age, im- 
becility, and insanity, are the barriers. Would this 
be a good reason for , keeping white men slaves ? If 
not, it is of no force here. Such persons are objects 
of special kindness, not of brutal degradation and chat- 
telhood. Worse off they could not be — better they 
might be possibly. These extreme cases, however, 
are comparatively few in number, and do not affect 
the general question of emancipation. The slaves, 
much too commonly for the wishes of their masters, 
are ready to incur all the expense, danger and sepa- 
ration incident to an escape into a land of freedom. 
Let it be known that dogs, horses, guns and manacles 
will not be in requisition to frustrate their attempts, 
and these men — yes, even the aged and infirm — will 
quickly bid adieu to the tender mercies of the slave- 
holder — mercies which, though specious, are, never- 
theless, cruel. These difficult cases should never 
stand alone. They require to be offset by the im-r 
mense evils which attach to them as they are. If the 
wretched would suffer as freemen, it must be remem- 
bered that they will suffer as slaves. We are told 
that suffering and injustice must follow emancipation, 
just as though but for emancipation nothing of the 



NEVER AN ACT OF BENEVOLENCE. 73 

kind would ever happen. Is not slavery all suffering, 
all injustice '? "Why, then, insist on the perpetuation 
of slavery as a preventive of these evils? If slave- 
holders would do wrong in emancipating their slaves, 
they must do far greater wrong not to emancipate 
them. If wrong must be done, let them "by all means 
take that course which will do the least. But the 
wrongs of emancipation are more fancied than real ; 
they are, for the most part, an idle bugbear, conjured 
up to relieve the consciences of slave-holders, when 
pressed by the claims of their unoffending victims. 
Interest, not humanity, is the real basis of all such 
arguments. If wrong occurs to the slave in conse- 
quence of emancipation, the slave-holder is not re- 
sponsible for it, any more than he is responsible for 
the wrongs which arise to other people who have their 
rights. The plea of retaining the slave for his bene- 
fit, if good in this case, would justify us in seizing 
upon the liberties of any other class of men, when, in 
our judgment, their interests demand such seizure — 
thus subjecting every inalienable right to the caprice, 
the rapacity, the ignorance, and the wickedness of 
lawless intermeddling. 



74 SLAVEEY AND THE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SLAVERY NEVER TH» RESULT OF NECESSITY. 

As " drowning men catch at straws," we find slave- 
holders and their apologists much inclined to extenu- 
ate their conduct by the plea of necessity. When 
driven from the fallacy that slave-holding is an act of 
mercy, they try to sustain themselves by a sort of 
fatalism. It is not wonderful that slave-holders should 
resort to this method of justification, but it is strange 
that Christian Churches should be misled by the spe- 
cious pretence. Men, strongly imbued with the spirit 
of reform, and deadly hostile to slavery, have often^ 
contented themselves with resolving that all voluntary 
slave-holders should be excluded from the Church. 
This is as much as to say that there may be a class of 
slave-holders who are involuntary, and, therefore, 
innocent. All such distinctions are exceedingly fu- 
tile ; they have neither theoretical nor practical con- 
sistency. We -might as well talk of involuntary can- 
nibalism. But we will examine some of the alleged 
causes of the necessity in question. 

1. It is said "the present generation of slave-hold- 
ers were born under the system of slavery, and have 
no control over it — their condition was pre-deter- 
mined, and they are not responsible for its evils." 
Now this is in part true, but does not at all exculpate 
the slave-holder. It is no more true of slavery than 



NEVER TIIE RESULT OF NECESSITY. 75 

of other sins, that men are born under their influence, 
and crippled by their antiquity and their preva- 
lence. And if the plea of necessity is good in this 
case, it is good against all reform. Suppose Sabbath- 
breaking or lying had been sanctioned everywhere for 
centuries, would the present generation be at liberty 
to consider themselves hopelessly entangled ? Could 
they not break away from these sins, notwithstanding 
the evil example of their ancestors, and all the effects 
of vicious habits and vicious associations % None will 
deny that they could and should, without the least 
hesitation. Why, then, shall we tolerate the sin of 
slavery as we tolerate no other sin % Or, is slavery 
not a sin ? 

AYe do not dispute that the hereditary character of 
v slavery has made the work of emancipation more 
difficult. In many resj^ects, the present race of slave- 
holders are eminently unfitted for the work of emanci- 
pation. They lack habits of industry, the love of 
liberty, the spirit of philanthropy, a knowledge of 
men and things, social advantages, and, above all, a 
government free from the disorders induced by op- 
pression. But still, none of these things, nor all of 
them together, render the work impossible. Slave- 
holders are not worse off, in this respect, than other 
sinners. The drunkard is poorly prepared for reform — ■ 
degraded, diseased, impoverished, and impelled by an 
insatiable appetite, he is anything but fitted for the 
arduous work of temperance. And yet we do not ex- 
cuse him from the attempt, nor deem his efforts un- 
likely to succeed. That the slave-holder is predesti- 



76 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

nated to continue in sin, cannot be true, for God has 
commanded all men to repent, and we must either 
deny that slave-holding is sin, or conclude that the 
slave-holder should abandon the practice at once. 

2. "The slaves, being property, could not be given 
up without impoverishing their owners, and ruining 
the country." This, we apprehend, is the most for- 
midable objection. Emancipation is a question of 
dollars and cents. All the necessity in the case is of 
a pecuniary character. But just this difficulty occurs 
in some form in reference to every sin. When Paul 
preached at Ephesus against idolatry, none opposed 
him more vehemently than Demetrius, who " made 
silver shrines for Diana." His emphatic, " Sirs, ye 
know that by this craft we have our wealth," revealed 
the true secret of his zeal. Superstition was profita- 
ble to him. If vice itself is not always profitable, 
there is always a class of people who make a liveli- 
hood by pandering to vice, and these cannot reform, 
because it cuts off their ill-gotten gains. The same 
is true of slave-holders. Some would, no doubt, lose 
all their property, and the whole country would, for a 
time, nominally have less wealth, by ceasing to inven- 
tory human beings as property, but is this any suffi- 
cient reason for slave-holding? Does increase of 
wealth justify the crime of robbery ? If so, the dis- 
tiller should continue his business, even though myri- 
ads die, and myriads more are stripped of their all, to 
fill his coffers. The robber should continue to rob, 
and the thief should retain his stolen property, if 
slavery is no crime ; for these have to encounter ex- 



NEVER THE RESULT OF NECESSITY. 77 

actly the same kind of necessity that presses upon the 
slave-holder. 

It has often been said that we must devise some 
expedient to relieve the immense losses which the ab- 
olition of slavery would occasion, before we press the 
qu< stion upon the South. If such an obligation exists, 
it will not apply to one class of culprits only ; we are 
equally hound to provide for any pecuniary losses 
which other wicked men may sustain by "ceasing to 
do evil." The argument has not a particle of force, 
and ought never to he named where there is the least 
reverence for Christianity. It supposes that money 
is more necessary than virtue, and that men are un- 
der no obligation to reform, if they are likely to lose 
property by so doing. A more blasphemous senti- 
ment never had existence. 

3. " The slaves could not take care of themselves." 
All know that this part of the alleged necessity for 
continued slave-holding is so far from being true, that 
the slaves not only take care of themselves, but of 
their masters too. In all slave-holding countries, 
slaves are compelled to till the soil, and do almost 
everything in the shape of manual labor. But the 
declaration, idle as it is, has long been contradicted 
by facts. Hundreds and thousands of free negroes, 
scattered through the different States of the Union, 
do provide for themselves, and quite as comfortably 
as their brethren are provided' for, who still remain in 
bondage. This objection is too manifestly puerile to 
claim further notice. 

4. "The laws will not admit of emancipation." 



78 SLAVERY AND THE CHTTECH. 

Here, again, the necessity involves a direct conflict 
with religion. In a matter of justice to man, are hu- 
man laws to have precedence of the law of God ? If 
the slave ought to be free, it is in vain to tell us that 
the law will not let him be free. What right have 
we to hold him, contrary to justice and brotherly kind- 
ness — *- laws of God, and paramount to all other laws ? 
The wicked, who neither fear God nor regard man, 
may put forth such objections, but no Christian can 
do it with decency. We are aware that the slave- 
holding States have sought to perpetuate slavery, by 
throwing embarrassments in the way of emancipation. 
But, as yet, these obstacles are easily overcome, where 
there is the slightest disposition to do right. The 
slaves are endowed with the power of locomotion ; 
they are not like trees, which cannot move, and must, 
therefore, remain always in the same place. Hence, 
if their owners wish to set them free, they have only 
to send them, or go with them, to a land of liberty — 
happily, in many instances, not remote. This we 
mention the more readily, as the slaves themselves are 
much inclined to show that emancipation is practica- 
ble, in spite of the laws and the owner also. Masters, 
though under some restrictions, still have the right to 
go where they will with their property ; and, as slaves 
are being constantly driven in gangs, all through the 
various slave States, for the purpose of trade, they 
certainly might be driven to the free States, if their 
owners had any disposition to enfranchise them. The 
plea of legal embarrassments is wholly groundless in 
itself, as against emancipation ; for, though it may 



NEVER THE RESULT OF NECESSITY. 79 

retard, it cannot, possibly, prevent the master's power 
to manumit. 

5. " The slaves refuse to leave their masters." It 
is barely possible that, in some instances, slaves are 
so ignorant and worthless, as not to know the value 
of liberty, or care to preserve it. Such cases occur 
in free countries, and it is not surprising if they are 
still more numerous among a people who, for many 
generations, have been denied all cultivation. How 
should they know what freedom is, and what its value 
to man ? Have they ever been taught to value lib- 
erty, except by feeling the pains of oppression ? ISTo : 
but they have always been told that slavery was the 
best for them — that God made them to be slaves, and 
would send them to hell if they sought to be free. Is 
it strange, then, that with such teaching, and such 
advantages, some slaves should say they preferred not 
to -be free ? Would it not be contrary to all experience, 
if such an education produced — unless by reaction — 
a love of liberty ? Be it then, that many of these 
poor, degraded creatures are ready, like Esau, to sell 
their birthright for a mess of pottage. This very 
foolishness of choice — this worse than bestial low- 
ness of desire — is the master's crime ! lie lias crushed 
the soul till its manhood has gone, and only the brute 
remains. "We do not doubt that slavery is omnipo- 
tent for evil — it can kill out all the nobler instincts 
of the man, and probably has done so in many instan- 
ces. We have no hesitation in conceding the triumphs 
of the institution in this line; but it is altogether im- 
possible for us to conceive how any humane mind 



80 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

could urge such a reason for the continuance of 
slavery. 

It would be absurd, however, to suppose that this 
state of things is general among the slave population. 
In particular instances, the love of liberty may have 
expired, but the large and continually increasing 
number of fugitives from slavery, shows that the in- 
stinctive desire of freedom is still rampant in the 
hearts of the enslaved. The record of these escapes, 
if it could be written out, would prove that bondmen 
have, not unfrequently, a just appreciation of human 
rights, an intolerable loathing of bondage, a chival- 
rous courage, and indomitable perseverance. So 
strong is the tendency to liberty, that it requires the 
utmost vigilance of their oppressors to keep them 
from self-emancipation. If the slaves do not wish to 
be free, what mean the laws against education ? And 
why are slave-holders so much in fear of insurrection % 
"We need nothing more than the laws of the slave 
States, to establish the fact that the slaves are not 
contented, and do not remain willingly in slavery. 
This iniquitous legislation testifies for the slave, and 
contradicts the assertion of all who maintain that he 
has no wish to be free. Kept, he may be, but it can 
only be done by degrading him to a brute, and deny- 
ing him, as far as possible, all opportunities to escape. 
The argument may be applied to slaves with little 
variation. They are slaves, but not from necessity. 
It may be hazardous for them to seek freedom — they 
may fail, or, perhaps, die in the attempt. But has 
not freedom always been purchased at this price? 



NEVER THE RESULT OF NECESSITY. 81 

Ask our Revolutionary patriots if peril did not sur- 
round them at every step. It was on sanguinary 
battle-fields, that they gained what the slave pants to 
enjoy. They endured all manner of sufferings — 
confiscation, poverty, reproach, war, and death, to 
secure a more perfect liberty. Yes, even the Father 
of his Country stood exposed to the traitor's doom, 
and had to console himself with the belief that " his 
neck was not made for a halter." There were men 
who would not have scorned to hang the immortal 
"Washington, because he sought to augment his own 
and his country's freedom ; and there are men who 
would kill the slave for emulating his noble example. 
The danger is undeniable, and so is the duty to meet 
it fearlessly. If slaves cower beneath the lash, and 
refuse to die for their rights, they seal their own doom. 
Such men refuse liberty on the only terms ever grant- 
ed to man. They are not worthy of freedom, or they 
would be willing to pay its price. No necessity lies 
upon them, but such as has always been the attendant 
of noble aspirations. 

Should any question the right of the slave to assert 
his freedom, and break away from his chains, we must 
remind them that the difficulty, whether theological 
or political, is not confined to the slave. The time* 
was, when our ancestors were enthralled, and we have 
no doubt they did well in striking for liberty ; and, 
even now, millions of the old world have our sympa- 
thies in their efforts to throw off hoary despot ism. 
"Why do we approve of our own freedom, and of the 
prospective emancipation of European sufferers, if 



82 SLAVEEY AND THE CHTIECH. 

these achievements have waged war upon the rights 
of others ? We must, to be consistent, go back to 
servitude ; for some master's property was injured 
when our fathers escaped from serfdom. But we 
scarcely need reply to an argument which denies the 
right of progress, and assumes that it is wrong to 
claim our own God-given rights. Slaves are as much 
entitled to rise in the scale of political, moral, and 
social improvement, as other human beings. It would 
require a special revelation to exempt them from the 
common immunities of our nature. They are weighed 
down by no fatality — cut off by no decree of God ; 
they may be, and ought to be, what others are — free 
and independent. Long years have not sanctified the 
barbarous cruelty and base injustice which first en- 
slaved them ; they are as free, to-day, to assume the 
rights of men, as if there never had been a slave in 
the world. "No necessity binds either master or slave 
to this guilty course. On the contrary, if both do not 
instantly reform, they contemn religion, and outrage 
all the maxims of political rectitude. They virtually 
say, that the gospel shall not raise the fallen, nor 
sanctify the depraved — that the reign of error and 
sin shall be perpetual, and the kingdom of God shall 
never come — that wrong is right, or that right is but 
the accident of power triumphing over innocence, 
manhood, liberty, and religion. Necessity, then, in 
this regard, is no other than perverseness of will. 



PART II. 

THE RELATION OF SLAVERY TO THE CHURCH. 



The relation of slavery to the Church is, "undoubt- 
edly, the same as that of all other great crimes — a 
relation of utter antagonism. At first view, it hardly 
seems necessary to dwell upon so palpable a truth ; 
having shown the moral character of slavery, it looks 
like a work of supererogation, to formally discuss its 
ecclesiastical relations. But, bad as slavery is ac- 
knowledged to be, there are many who insist upon its 
continuance in the Church. They object to any rule 
expelling slave-holders, or preventing their admission 
to Church-fellowship. Under these circumstances, it 
becomes necessary to take up the subject in its reli- 
gions bearings. Slavery, though conceded to be a 
sin, is not conceded to be such a sin as stamps the 
character inevitably with infamy. It is considered a 
venial fault, or, rather, no fault at all, in the Church- 
member, and the cry of fanaticism and persecution 
is raised whenever an attempt is made to drive it out 
of the Church, as we drive out other crimes. It is a 



84- SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 

sin in the State, but not in the Church ; it is a sin of 
the State, and not of the Church ; it is wrong in pol- 
itics, and right in religion. Yes, right — for to such 
lengths is the matter carried. The advocates of slave- 
ry do not hesitate to declare that slave-holding is a 
virtue — a religious duty. This throws upon us the 
necessity of showing that slavery is fatal to Christian 
character, and to the existence of the Church. 



CHAPTER I. 

SLAVES CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 

We do not mean to say that slaves cannot be con- 
verted, and become Christians. They are, probably, 
as open to conversion as other people, and, when fa- 
vored with the means of grace, no doubt many of 
them become true converts. But we mean to say, 
that Christianity strikes the slave law dead — that the 
slave is virtually emancipated by his conversion. 
Slaves may be converted, but they are not converted 
slaves ; they may " abide as they are called," so far 
as the form or letter of the slave law is concerned, 
but they come under the power of a higher law, 
which exacts of them service incompatible with slave- 
ry. Neither do we assert that a slave cannot be 
saved as a heathen. If he acts u~p to the light of na- 
ture, and is denied all opportunity of becoming ac- 



SLAVES CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 85 

quainted with the gospel, he stands on the same ground 
as the better class of heathen, concerning whom we 
have hope. But the salvation of infants, idiots, and 
heathen, is not the result of any Christianizing influ- 
ence exerted upon them in this life. 

Our reasons for believing that the slave cannot be 
a Christum, are the following : 

1. Slavery unmakes the man. The slave is a thing, 
and not a man ; he is not known as a man — lie is 
not permitted to act as a man. Having been declared 
by the law to be a chattel, he is not allowed to be 
anything more, nor is it possible for him to be any- 
thing more, while the law remains in force against 
him, except by incurring martyrdom. This sad ne- 
cessity of sinking below the organic elements of his 
nature, utterly excludes Christianity. A thing — a 
chattel — an article of traffic, has no responsibility. 
Moral character is never affirmed of mere things ; 
manhood is an essential concomitant and condition of 
religion. Conversion brings the slave up from his 
degradation, and re-instates him among the human 
species, in spite of the law. The Christian, therefore, 
is not a slave, in the eye of the law, because he is not 
a thing; his caste — his humanity — which the slave 
code had taken from him, is restored by the law of 
God. Kow, if Christianity does thus bring back the 
slave's manhood, it is in direct conflict with the law 
which took it away ; the lesser law yields to the great- 
er, and the slave, by becoming a Christian, becomes 
also a man. Did the slave law make provision for 
humanity, then human beings might be slaves, and 



86 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

still be Christians ; but no provision being made for 
the slave to be more than a thing, Christianity inter- 
feres to relieve him from the grasp of unrighteous 
authority, and place him in a position of moral re- 
sponsibility. 

2. A slave can have no higher master. The law 
gives the owner supreme control. The slave has not 
a single reserved right. He is as destitute of all 
rights whatsoever as a brute, or even any inanimate 
object. 

Now, the point in dispute is, whether one human 
being can be thus subject to another human being, 
and still be a Christian. "We maintain that it is im- 
possible. 1. Because " no man can serve two mas- 
ters" — that is, two supreme masters. If the slave 
must obey man, whatever he may command, he can- 
not obey God, unless upon the supposition that human 
and divine commands are always in accordance with 
each other, which is too improbable to be entertained 
for a moment. 2. But apart from this, it is impossi- 
ble that any Christain should be under supreme obli- 
gation to man. The idea of such obligation, is essen- 
tially anti-Christian. It cancels the claims of the 
Creator, in a way at once atheistic and unceremoni- 
ous. It destroys the possibility of religion, for the 
very object of the gospel is to bring men — slaves and 
slave-holders not excepted — to obey God as their 
supreme Lord and Law-Giver. 3. Every Christian, 
by the act of conversion, is made a subject of Christ's 
kingdom. " One is your master, even Christ." This 
subjection to Christ, brings the individual into new 



SLATES CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 87 

relation?, and necessarily destroys all obligation to 
obey man in anything which is contrary to the law 
of God. The slave is no longer " wholly subject to 
the will of another" human being. He is even free 
from the evil propensities of his own corrupt nature, 
which had previously enslaved him, no less than the 
civil law. Hence, it is truly said of the Christian 
that he is " free indeed!" 

AVhen men are converted, slavery is broken down — 
the master can no longer control them, except in 
things lawful to be done. This, we need not say, is 
a serious abridgment of slavocratic despotism. 

Bondmen, as well as freemen, must obey God in all 
things, and if the former, with this necessity resting 
upon them, can still be chattels, and obedient to man 
in everything, we have no objection. But it is alto- 
gether an abuse of language to call such a state slave- 
ry ; it is slavery only in name. We might as well 
call him a Christian who merely bears the Christian 
name, but performs none of the duties which it 
implies. 

3. The slave cannot cultivate his powers of body or 
mind as the law of God requires. Education is de- 
nied him, and if rest, or food, or clothing, sufficient 
to preserve health, is allowed, it is only because the 
want of these might depreciate his value as a work- 
ing animal. The less mind the slave has the better, 
provided only he knows enough to work. But this, 
however well it may subserve the peace and stabil- 
ity of slave-holding communities, does not meet the 
w T ants of human nature. Development and culture 



88 SLAVERY AND THE CHT7RCH. 

are requisite to that enlarged usefulness for which 
the Christian is taught to aspire. He must not rest 
contented with doing some good, but is obliged to use 
all his talents or be condemned as an unfaithful stew- 
ard. A blight is upon him that will sink him to the 
pit, unless we suppose the wicked law under which 
he is held can be plead as a justification of ignorance. 
But the hope of such justification is utterly futile ; 
for, if applicable in this case, it is in every other ; if 
ignorance may be excused because the master pro- 
hibits knowledge, so may Sabbath-breaking, false- 
hood, and dishonesty. 

4. The slave cannot have a conscience. His own 
convictions of duty are wholly discarded. He may 
think it right to worship God, to pray, and to be per- 
sonally pure ; but the master has absolute power over 
him in all these particulars. Every abomination 
which the master sees proper to tell his slave to commit, 
the slave is bound to practice. The female must give 
herself up to pollution, the mother, must forsake her 
children, and the wife her husband. And all, of every 
age and sex, are bound to forsake their God, and do 
any manner of wickedness that their masters may re- 
quire. Here the conflict begins, and Christianity 
strips the slave instantly of all the irresponsibility and 
degradation which the slave law entails upon him — 
it abrogates the slave law, and makes the slave a man, 
and clothes him with all the responsibilities and im- 
munities of a man. Accordingly, when St. Paul sent 
Onesimus back to Philemon, he bid the latter receive 
the former " not now as a servant, but above a ser- 



SLAVES CANNOT BE CTIEISTLANS. 89 

vant, a brother beloved." Such is the effect of reli- 
gion in every case ; the convert is snatched from the 
clutches of human authority, though not always eman- 
cipated from human power. In like manner, death 
reigns for a time over the body after the soul is par- 
doned. The body of the once slave may still be within 
reach of the slave-holder, but the spirit is free, and 
the free spirit will keep the enslaved body from all 
sin, in spite of the world, the flesh and the devil. 

5. Slaves cannot perform either conjugal, or parent- 
al, or filial duties. They cannot, because all power 
to discharge these duties is lodged with the master, 
and made dependent upon his will. He may, at any 
moment, imprison, sell, or separate those on whom 
such obligations rest, and thus cause them to violate 
the law of God. But slavery knows nothing of mar- 
riage or of the relations to which it gives rise — it 
does not admit the slave to these hallowed duties — 
it resolutely ignores his right to participate in them. 
Husband and wife, son and daughter, are terms ap- 
plicable to human beings, but the slave is not a hu- 
man being, and, therefore, has no interests of this 
kind. "We ask, is it possible that a Christian should 
thus, at the bidding of man, waive these sacred 
claims ? Can he be a Christian, and stand in this doubt- 
ful attitude to duties which God has laid upon him? 
we answer, unhesitatingly, Xo. These obligations 
having been imposed by the Creator, cannot be re- 
moved by human legislation. 

6. Slaves cannot be Christians, because, in order to 
slavery, they must part with the humanity which God 



90 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

has given them, and in doing so, they commit sin. 
No man has any right to surrender, in this manner, 
the endowments received from his Creator. We re- 
ceive onr powers as a sacred trust, and are held re- 
sponsible for them. If they are relinquished at the 
bidding of man, the divine law is treated with con- 
tempt. It is here that the slave incurs guilt. He 
parts with a treasure, of which he was constituted, if 
not the sole, yet the principal guardian, and for which 
he must account to his Maker. JSTo man can thus de- 
base himself, and be innocent. Men are created that 
they may be men ; and if they sink down to mere 
things, and become disqualified for the duties of hu- 
manity, they cannot escape the guilt of deserting their 
post in life. We are well aware that the slave law is 
imperative and clamorous ; it clutches, and threatens 
to swallow its victims alive and " whole, as those that 
go down to the pit :" but all this is no sufficient apol- 
ogy. The slave may have to elect between death 
and obedience to his God, or to the constitutional law 
of his nature ; but, in this necessity, he only stands 
beset by the same difficulty which attends all other 
men, whenever danger lies in the path of duty. " He 
that departeth from iniquity maketh himself a prey." 
Either the slave is under no obligation to use his fac- 
ulties, or he sins by refraining from their use. We 
believe the obligation rests upon him as fully as upon 
other men, and that in consenting to be less than 
man, he wickedly debases himself, and, therefore, 
cannot be a Christian. 
The argument, in form, stands thus : Christians 



SLAVES CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 91 

must obey the law of God : but slaves cannot obey the 
law of God ; therefore, slaves cannot be Christians. 
As we have advanced this sentiment editorially, it 
has met with considerable remonstrance, and some 
have denounced it in no measured terms. The follow- 
ing may be taken as a sample : 

" The Northern Christian Advocate has made a new discov- 
ery in relation to the institution of slavery. It is now ascer- 
tained that the relation is equally fatal to master and servant, 
and that submission on the part of the slave, as certainly and 
effectually excludes him from a right to the fellowship of the 
Church, as the holding him in slavery does his master. Tliis 
new theory, horrible as it is, will have a host of advocates, both 
in the ministry and membership of the Northern Church. Rea- 
son, experience, and even the authority of Revelation, can pre- 
sent no effectual barrier to such a fearful delusion. We may 
hope, at least, for a check to its progress in that principle of 
reaction which is the safety-valve of the universe." 

The above is an extract from a recent letter of Bish- 
op Soule to the editor ttf the Southern Christian Ad- 
vocate. However horrible our position may be, it is 
impregnably just. N~o man has attempted to disprove 
it. Nor is the discovery a new one. It was known 
at least as long ago as the days of Homer. 

"Jove fixed it certain that whatever day 
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away." 

{Odyssey, Book xvii.) 

All we have ever affirmed is, that Christianity ne- 
cessarily raises man above the condition of a brute. 
It exacts of him duties which a chattel cannot per- 



92 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

form. It imparts to him an inspiration and an im- 
provement which break through the trammels of civil 
authority, and make every slave converted a " brother 
beloved." It makes him the " Lord's free man," " an 
heir of God," and "joint heir with Christ." But the 
slave law says the slave is " as nothing, as dead, as a 
quadruped." It accordingly denies him the rights of a 
man, and seeks to obliterate from his nature all traces 
of manhood. Christianity, on the other hand, tries to 
develop the manhood in man — to bring out the noblest 
qualities of his soul, and build him up in wisdom and 
holiness. And in order to this, it must necessarily 
free him from all obligation to do wrong, whoever 
may command it. 

Between slavery and Christianity there is, there- 
fore, an eternal antagonism. Bishop Soule thinks it 
horrible, that a man cannot submit to be stripped of 
his manhood and of his obligation to God, and still be 
a Christian. And he will, perhaps, allege that the 
claims of heaven are graduated to man's temporal 
circumstances, so that of the slave nothing more is 
required than obedience to his master in all things. 
But we totally deny that this requisition of obedience 
to masters, involves an obligation to do the slightest 
wrong. The slave may not break the Sabbath, nor 
lie, nor steal, at the bidding of his master — hence it 
follows that a slave, by his conversion, is made free 
from the power of man, whereinsoever that power is 
contrary to the will of God. Even Bishop Soule will 
admit that the master's power is limited in this re- 
spect. This limitation, however, is fatal to the whole 



SLAVES CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 93 

system of slavery. For, if the master may require 
nothing wrong, then the slave is free to do his whole 
duty — free to be a man and a Christian, in spite of the 
law which makes him a chattel. This is practical 
abolition. The law may remain, but it is a dead let- 
ter. The slave is emancipated by the gospel of Christ. 

^Ye maintain that the obligations of slavery and the 
obligations of Christianity are diametrically opposite 
— that slavery has excluded humanity, and with it, 
the possibility of religion — that conversion, by resto- 
ring the functions of humanity, virtually annihilates 
the slave law. And so far as we have any knowledge 
of slave character, this view is sustained by actual 
occurrences. Slaves have held fast their integrity by 
resisting the unrighteous requirements of their mas- 
ters, and suffering the consequences. Unless the slave 
States are greatly belied, many of the sable sons and 
daughters of Africa have preserved their virtue only 
by preferring martyrdom to apostacy. That is to say, 
they have thrown off slavery — have "resisted unto 
blood, striving against sin." Uncle Tom, the fictitious 
hero of Mrs. Stowe's celebrated work, is only a famil- 
iar illustration of the common fate of invincible piety, 
under the workings of the horrible slave system. In 
every such case, religion or slavery must give way ; 
if the master cannot corrupt the slave into obedience, 
the slave bows to death, and asserts his freedom by 
gaining a martyr's crown. 

Should it be said the slave may have a good mas- 
ter — one who will both treat him kindly and require 
nothing wrong of him, and that, in such a case, the evils 



94: SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

we have mentioned would not exist : we reply that the 
supposition yields the whole question ; it concedes 
that the slave law may be inoperative — the very 
thing for which we contend. In so far as the slave- 
master treats his slave as a human being, he treats 
him contrary to the slave law, and thus practically 
nullifies the law. All rights accorded to the slave 
are violations of the law by which he is held in bond- 
age ; if he is not treated as a brute, he is not treated 
according to the character which the_ statute gives 
him, nor according to the power vested in the master. 
That anomalous instances occur in which the authori- 
ty of the master is not exercised, we are ready to ad- 
mit ; but this only confirms the truth of our position — 
it shows that the law must be suspended to make way 
for Christianity. We do not, by any means, deny that 
the master may cease from his unrighteous exactions 
and give his slaves a chance to become Christians ; 
we only insist that he must so cease, or that the slaves 
must discard his authority, if they are ever con- 
verted. 

What, then, becomes of slavery ? Is not the chat- 
tel at once a man 1 and is there not laid on him the 
duties of a man ? Has he not a God ? and are not 
all his powers of body and mind to be supremely de- 
voted to his God ? Is he not under just the same ob- 
ligations in this respect as other men ? and if so, can 
he, more than any other man, submit to anything 
which contravenes the will of Heaven ? Now, unless 
these questions can be answered in the negative, the 
controversy is settled — slavery expires as Christianity 



SLAVES CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 95 

progresses, and the presence of the latter displaces 
the former, as surely as light displaces darkness. 

"We have dwelt the longer on this point, because it 
has too commonly been supposed that future happi- 
ness might recompense the slave for present misery. 
Slavery has been considered no barrier to religion, 
and the slave not much to be commiserated, since an- 
other and better life would make ample amends for 
his wretchedness in this. But the case is widely va- 
ried, if slavery cuts off eternal as well as temporal 
prospects. It is our deliberate conviction that the 
slave is ruined for both worlds. 

"Sin kills beyond the tomb." 

And the sin of slavery kills quite as certainly as any 
other sin. If the slave could die into freedom and 
felicity, we would not dispute about the injuries in- 
flicted upon him here ; but when it is understood that 
his condition is no less hopeless for Heaven than for 
earth, his fate appeals to Christian sympathy with no 
common force. Heaven is not to be peopled with 
chattels. The slave-holder cannot console himself 
with the reflection that the evils which he occasions 
will end with this life. His brutes here will be brutes 
hereafter. Having driven the poor slave from all 
vantage ground, and denied him all opportunities of 
improvement, till the grave closed over him — hav- 
ing, in short, defeated every purpose for which pro- 
bationary life was given, he must not expect the vic- 
tims of liis cruelty to be recompensed by the joys of 
Heaven. For Heaven, preparation is necessary, but 



96 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

this preparation the slave may not acquire. It would 
no doubt be very convenient if a portion of mankind 
could be degraded to utter brutality through all their 
lives, and then pass safely into Paradise ; oppression 
and spoliation might be pushed to any length without 
endangering the soul, and Heaven would become the 
receptacle of all the cast-off and worn-out tilings 
which inexorable death had placed beyond the op- 
pressor's reach. The slave-holder might then bargain 
and sell, and drive his property while life lasted, and 
God would kindly take it at the grave, and enthrone 
it in everlasting light. But such is not the economy 
of Providence. The gospel of Christ provides that 
the redeemed shall be saved here ; it provides that the 
men admitted to Heaven shall be men on earth — men 
purified and trained for that holy place. 

It is this soul murder — this double and eternal death, 
which renders the institution of slavery so horrible. 
The blow is professedly aimed only at the body ; but in 
order to make the physical powers of the human being 
available for this awful service, it is necessary to en- 
feeble and extinguish, as far as may be, the intellec- 
tual and moral faculties. This is done by positive 
edicts against education, and against all the more effi- 
cient means of improvement : it is further done by 
the most abject and suffocating restrictions of person- 
al liberty, and by inhibiting every right, relation, and 
pursuit calculated to impart mental force. And as 
if determined that nothing should be wanting to 
complete his ruin, the slave is deliberately cast from 
the pale of humanity. What the chances of such a 



SLAVES CANNOT BE C1U11STL- 07 

being are for religions culture, is but too evid 
With this deadening process going on 
bier nature — with the law interdicting his right to be 
human, he certainly cannot be expected to rise in the 
scale of excellence. If he does rise, it must be in 
defiance of the circumstances by which he is sur- 
rounded. In obedience to the higher instincts of his 
nature — not quite obliterated by the extinguishing 
appliances of slavery — he must assert his humanity 
and become a man. 

Finally, however hard it may seem to un-christian- 
ize the slave for remaining a slave after his conver- 
sion, there is no other alternative. We must either 
deny that human beings are under obligation to cul- 
tivate their powers, and discharge the duties incident 
to the several relations of life, or hold slaves, as we 
hold all other men, bound to act up to their human 
nature, and not as mere brutes, the only character 
which the law assigns them. Slaves should be men, 
or they should not ; if the former, they must of ne- 
cessity throw off the trammels of the slave code, 
though at the peril of life ; but if the latter is true, 
then their obligations are canceled, and the virtues 
required of men are a dead letter to all in bonds. 
Dare any take this position I Dare any say that souls 
may be trained for Heaven, without being taught to 
obey the law of God in all things ? We admit that 
slaves may be converted, but their conversi< >n is one 
thing, and their Christian culture another. We have 
no right to infer that they may live and enjoy religion 
out of the pale of humanity, because Buch a state 



98 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

does not debar them from repentance. The greatest 
sinners may be converted — the drunkard, the liar, the 
swearer, and the adulterer—but can they live in the 
practice of the same things after their conversion ? 
Certainly not. No more can the slave be "a servant 
of man " in anything contrary to holiness. His own 
moral integrity thenceforth becomes to him of sovereign 
consequence — he is the Lord's freeman, and none 
may oblige him to sin. "We must not be deceived by 
appearances. ~No mere professions — no religious feel- 
ings or exercises, are to have weight as proofs of reli- 
gion, where the life is not right. If the slave still 
remains a submissive tool of his owner' — if his 
obligation - to God is not considered paramount to 
everything else, he is not a Christian. But if his 
allegiance to God is sacred, he is not a slave. Men 
may call him a slave, but the mastery over him is in 
Heaven. 



CHAPTER II. 

SLAVE-HOLDERS CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 

If slavery incapacitates the slave for religion, it 
equally incapacitates the slave-holder. The disastrous 
effects of the system are, indeed, even more conspic- 
uous in the latter case than in the former. That the 
robber surfers a greater moral injury than the robbed^ 



SLAVE-HOLDERS CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 99 

admits of no dispute. But this principle applies to 
all who commit crime, and to the slave-holder as truly 
as to other criminals. It is not denied that the slave- 
holder may he converted and become a Christian ; he 
is not beyond the reach of grace, but in order to obtain 
it, he must renounce his sins. The drunkard may 
become a Christian, yet not without putting away his 
drunkenness ; mercy is gained only by repentance. 
Still further, it is not denied that men may be Christians 
and be merely technical slave-holders — that is, slave- 
holders according to the letter, but not according to 
the spirit of the law. As a mere formalist is not a 
Christian, so one who only formally holds slaves is 
not a real slave-holder. In order to slavery, the law 
must be carried out ; men must be regarded and 
treated as chattels, to the utter sacrifice of their per- 
sonal freedom, and all the collateral rights of human- 
ity. Having premised these things, we shall now 
present the argument against the religious character 
of slave-holders. 

1. Slave-holders cannot be Christians, because slave- 
ry is sin. We are aware that this proposition appears 
to assume the point in dispute. But the objection is of 
no force, unless it can be shown that slavery is not a sin. 
We maintain that slavery is a sin, a great sin, and a sin 
under all circumstances : and if this position is impreg- 
nable — it ought to be made to bear up the question 
under consideration. That sin destroys Christian 
character, is indeed a plain truth ; but there is a 
strange reluctance to apply it here. The law is ac- 
knowledged to be wicked, and slavery itself is pro- 



100 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

nounced an abomination ; but yet no blame is attached 
to the slave-holder — he is allowed to pass as the 
victim of circumstances — his sin is no sin, for the 
simple reason that the State is also involved in the 
crime. Did men look at the sin of slavery as they 
do at other sins, and hold all parties to a strict ac- 
countability for their participation in it, there would 
be little need of announcing a truth so palpable as 
that now before the reader. The argument itself is 
indisputable. The sinner cannot be a Christian. This 
is conceded by Dr. Fuller. 

" That sin must at once be abandoned, is a proposition which 
admits of no debate. If slavery, then, be a sin, it should at 
once be abolished." {Letters to Dr. Wayland, Letter 1.) 

Thus, it is only by denying slavery to be a sin, that 
its advocates pretend to claim a religious character for 
the slave-holder. And the denial extends not merely 
to slavery under certain circumstances, but to slavery 
per se : the institution must be pronounced right, if 
rightly used. But we have shown that it cannot be 
rightly used — that it is a crime in itself, and no more 
admits of improvement than murder or adultery. 

The fact that a sinner cannot be a Christian, is all 
we insist upon, in this connection, as this fact fully 
sustains the conclusion to which we arrive — namely, 
that the slave-holder is not a Christian. The argu- 
ment is valid, if the premises are good. Hence, no 
one will accuse us of unfairness, unless they, at the 
same time, reject the proofs which we have adduced 
to show the essential wickedness of slavery. Let 



SLATE-nOLDEES CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 101 

those who stumble at the idea of unchristianizing 

slave-holders, remember that the conclusion is inevi- 
table, if the premises which we have assumed are 
correct. That slave-holders cannot be Christians, is 
no arbitrary and harsh judgment, provided simply 
that slavery is a sin. 

Why, th-^w, shall the proposition at the head of this 
chapter be considered bold ? Why shall it be deemed 
uncharitable? It amounts to no more than this — 
that sin is incompatible with religion. Slave-holders 
'and their apologists admit this, and still profess to be 
shocked when we say that slave-holders are not Chris- 
tians. They do not perceive, that in order to avoid 
this conclusion, they must absolutely deny the sinful- 
ness of slavery, and that the argument is nothing 
more than the legitimate application of a truth, always 
insisted upon by the opponents of slavery — viz : that 
slavery is a sin. The Christian is required to be holy, 
and if slavery is unholy, it is plain to demonstration 
that no Christian can be a slave-holder. Let those 
who dispute our position, set themselves to demolish 
the foundation on which it rests. Let them show, if 
they can, the immaculateness of slavery — that it is 
neither sin, nor of sinful tendency. When they have 
done this successfully, we will acknowledge our argu- 
ment unsound. 

2. Slave-holders cannot be Christians, because 
slavery usurps the Divine prerogatives. No Christian 
can exercise unlimited control over another human 
being. The Christian is aware that himself, and all 
other men, are bound to obey the law of God, and he 



102 SLAVERY AKD THE CHURCH. 

cannot presume to exercise a power which he knows 
belongs to God alone. That the master has absolute, 
unlimited authority over the slave, is beyond ques- 
tion. The slave has no power to do anything contrary 
to the will of the master. Let it be ever so great a 
crime, in the sight of God or man, that is exacted of 
him, the right of resistance is equally denied. He is 
made to know that the master's will is his supreme 
law for both worlds. What the master commands — 
be it right or wrong — that he must do. Here, then, 
is the most absolute and unqualified tyranny of which 
it is possible to conceive. It sets at naught the di- 
vine supremacy, and renders man accountable, not to 
his God, but to a human owner — a slave-master. 
Such an assumption of authority is wholly unknown 
in any other relation of life. An attempt has been 
made to find something analogous in the authority of 
a husband over his wife, of a parent over his children, 
and of a monarch over his subjects ; but the attempt 
is a failure. It is ridiculous to make such a compari- 
son. The mild and limited authority belonging to 
these relations, has no resemblance to the brutal des- 
potism of slavery. In the one case, there are always 
reserved rights, which operate as a check to abuses ; in 
the other, there are no reserved rights whatever. The 
conscience of the wife, and the child, and the subject, 
is never surrendered to human authority ; those who 
govern them, govern in subjection to a higher law, 
and it is always understood that a command to do 
wrong, emanating from such a source, would carry 
vith it no obligation, inasmuch as God has forbidden 



6LATF.-nOT.DKR3 CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 103 

all wrong-doing. But the slave-holder's authority 
has no qualification ; his victim not being human, in 
the eye of the law, is supposed to have no conscience 
to preserve inviolate, and no soul to be endangered 
by compliance with sinful requirements. The master 
is, therefore, entrusted with supreme control, and the 
slave bows to his every mandate, as to the decision of 
his final Judge. There is a further difference, too 
important to be overlooked : in the relations afore- 
said, the persons occupy their true positions in the 
social world — the wife was destined to be a wife, the 
child to be a child, and the subject a subject ; each is in 
his appropriate place, and subject to such authority 
only as is demanded by his natural position in 
society. But not so with the slave ; his powers must 
be crushed to keep him degraded ; the authority ne- 
cessary in this case, must be so perfect that it will cut 
off all return to manhood, and leave the man a brute 
forever. It is no common power that the slave-holder 
exercises ; on him is devolved the dreadful work of 
blasting the humanity of the negro, through every 
scene in life, and in every possible relation to society. 
He must execute the horrible purpose of the State ; 
the State has placed the slave among brutes, and it is 
the owner's business to keep him there. He is bound, 
as a law-abiding citizen, to see that the design of the 
government is not frustrated ; he is entrusted with 
the fearful responsibility of keeping the slave pre- 
cisely what the law has made him — a thing, a chattel. 
That no Christian can do this, without a forfeiture 
of religious character, is just as obvious as it is that 



104 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

no Christian can commit a variety of the highest 
crimes, one of which shall be the denial of a God. 
One of the first attributes of Christianity is, the ac- 
knowledgment of God in his several relations of Crea- 
tor, Preserver, and Governor. Where this recognition 
of Divinity is wanting, there can be no religion. 
But slavery sets aside the authority of God, as com- 
pletely as if he had never issued any command to 
the African. The slave is forbidden to be a man, and 
may neither know nor serve his God in the only rela- 
tion which he was created to sustain. He may, it is 
true, if the master chooses, learn something of reli- 
gion, but he must learn it out of character — learn it, 
not as a man and a member of society, but as one 
disinherited and forbidden to return to the common 
brotherhood of the human family. But even this, 
be it remembered, is completely optional with the 
master, and herein lies the grievous wrong. It was 
never designed that one human bein«; should stand in 
such a relation to another human being as to nullify 
the Creator's supremacy. Yet slavery makes this 
relation necessary — ■ it compels the owner to stand in 
the place of God, and exercise a power which does 
not belong to man. Even if the slave consented to 
the surrender of his powers in this manner, it would 
be wicked for the master to accept the surrender. 
How much more wicked, then, must it be when the 
wrong is inflicted by force ! If the slave has no right 
to consent to be a slave, surely the master has no 
right to compel him to be one. 

Before God, the slave and his owner stand on ex- 



SLAVE-HOLDERS CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. 105 

actly the same ground, and one lias just as rrmcli 
right as the other to interfere with any question of 
duty. Both are alike responsible to the Supreme au- 
thority for every act, and both must refrain from all 
improper coercion, or sink their Christian character. 
The slave-owner, however, cannot refrain, and still be 
the owner of human chattels ; if he refrains, his chat- 
tels immediately become men, and the slave law is a 
dead letter. If he fails to govern in everything — if 
he allows the slave to act as a man, and to choose 
what he will or will not do, then again the same 
result follows — the slave is virtually free, and the 
law is null. Thus a constant and unscrupulous usur- 
pation of the slave's rights as a man, must be kept 
up, or slavery ceases of its own accord. But the 
Christian cannot usurp the rights of any — he must 
" render to all their dues ;" consequently he cannot 
be a slave-holder. 

3. Slave-holders cannot be Christians, because 
slavery is a violation of the law of love. A Chris- 
tian must love the colored man as himself, and must 
do to him as he would wish, circumstances being 
reversed, should be done to himself. Xow, as " no 
man ever hated his own flesh," it is not possible for 
any one to wish for slavery — slavery for himself and 
children, through interminable generations. For this 
reason, every converted man will be utterly incapaci- 
tated to hold a slave. We do not say that lie may 
not nominally and technically hold a slave, but we 
say he cannot really hold one. lie will regard the re- 
lation as wicked, and will treat the law as a dead letter. 

5* 



106 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

Let it be observed, then, that we place the non- 
slave-holding of Christians on the ground of ac- 
tual incapacity. God has so constituted them that 
they cannot commit the abomination, and still retain 
the elements of their religious nature. In order to 
justification, they must not only renounce all desire 
to invade the rights of others, but actually attain to 
such a knowledge of right and wrong as will enable 
them to abstain from all unrighteousness. A Chris- 
tian cannot be a pirate, because piracy is of the devil ; 
and yet piracy is no worse than slavery. The laws 
of our country have long regarded the foreign slave 
trade as piracy ; but the foreign slave-trade is no 
worse than the domestic, and the trade in slaves, 
whether foreign or domestic, is no worse than the 
simple ownership of slaves. Moral purity justly ab- 
hors the whole traffic, counting every part of it equal- 
ly guilty — the seller, and the buyer, and the owner 
are all on the same ignominious level. Each and all 
consent to have and hold what honesty forbids — ■ what 
is not their own, and cannot be, for the simple reason 
that eternal justice assigns it to the slave. The law 
of love will not allow the Christian to participate in 
this robbery ; he may not even sanction it by his si- 
lence, much less by sharing, though it be ever so re- 
motely, in the vile transaction. Rebuke, not partici- 
pation, is demanded ; but not rebuke alone. It is not 
enough that the Christian reproves such deeds of 
darkness by words ; his acts, conservative of the slave's 
rights, must declare his heart-felt abhorrence of the 
abuse practiced upon his fellow man — though that 



SLAVE-HOLDERS CANNOT BE CHRISTIAN. 107 

man be a slave. In a word, the Christian is so con- 
stituted that he must, of necessity, regard the slave as 
a brother man, and treat him as such. lie cannot 
take advantage of a wicked law to oppress him, any 
more than he can to murder him — he cannot perform 
any one of all the several acts which are enjoined by 
the slave code. To carry out such laws, demands an- 
other kind of being — one who feels himself under no 
obligation to treat man as man — as a brother, for 
whose welfare even the sacrifice of life, if it were 
necessary, would be both a pleasure and a duty. 

4. Christians cannot be slave-holders, because slave- 
ry depresses men. The Christian is bound to elevate 
all around him, as fast as possible. ~Ko truth — no 
principle in religion, is plainer than this : that all 
men are to be cultivated and improved, as far as we 
have power to do it. It becomes impossible, there- 
fore, for a religious man to aid, either less or more, in 
the work of degradation — he views the African as 
his brother, and is compelled, by every consideration 
of duty, to educate . and improve him to the utmost 
of his power. Hence he must accord to him all the 
rights which the God of nature gave, and all the ten- 
der regards which the gospel of Christ enjoins. It 
would be singular, indeed, if Christianity, after im- 
posing the duty of culturing humanity — the human- 
ity of all men — to the highest extent, had, neverthe- 
less, excepted large classes, towards whom nothing 
was due, but the most rigorous and systematic depres- 
sion. Such an anomaly in religion there is not. 
portion of the human family is given up to ruin — 



108 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

none are predestinated to the crushing influence of 
slavery. Laws against education and liberty, against 
marriage and the rights of property, against con- 
science and manhood, are laws against God ; they are 
a direct attack upon Christianity, and must inevitably 
be spurned by every believer in divine revelation. 
Before a Christian can be a slave-holder, the law of 
God must be repealed, in every particular affecting 
the relations of man to man. The fraternal spirit, 
now so conspicuous in all parts of the law, must be 
utterly obliterated. When this is done, the work of 
desolation can go on, but not before. Until then, the 
obligations of the Gospel will make it impossible for 
any Christian to join in a conspiracy with civil gov- 
ernment against the rights of any man. 

But may not the Christian become the depositary 
of the slave's rights, and thus guard for the slave's 
good, what the law had taken from him ? Not at all. 
As to any guardianship of such rights, it is absurd — 
nay, more, impossible. ISTo man can, innocently, be 
the depositary of what belongs to another's manhood. 
The slave must regain his rights before he can be a 
man. None can act for him in this matter. God has 
laid certain duties on the slave, as a man, and will 
hold him — not his master — responsible for their 
performance. The master cannot answer for any but 
himself, in the day of judgment. Aside from the im- 
possibility of this transfer of obligations, is the in- 
trinsic guilt of the original transaction. The Chris- 
tian slave-owner, by consenting to hold the slave as 
a slave, endorses the conduct of the Legislature or 



SLAVE-HOLDERS CANNOT BE CIIKISTIAXS. 109 

law-making power, and thus becomes as guilty as 
those who perpetrated the enactment. Can an hon- 
est man consent to be the depositary of stolen goods ? 
He might, perhaps, for the purpose of restoring them 
to the owner, but not for a moment for any other pur- 
pose. The goods are not his, and never can be his ; 
to retain them, therefore, an instant, except for the sole 
purpose of returning them to their owner, is to be par- 
taker with the thief. AYe may render the case still 
plainer, by supposing the right in question to be, not 
that of personal freedom, but the right to life. Had 
the law, without cause, doomed the slave to death, 
could a Christian participate in the infliction ? Could 
he become the depositary and administrator of this 
cruel power? All will see at once, that to do so 
would be murder. The government should be left to 
execute its own wicked laws, if they must be execu- 
ted, for no honest man can lend himself to such a 
work. 

The plea that Christians hold slaves to shield them 
from a worse fate, is altogether fallacious. No worse 
fate is possible. He that is a slave, has lost all he had 
to lose, except life, and that is his only in a very 
qualified sense. As an animal, he might suffer more 
in the hands of one master than in the hands of an- 
other. But his rights as a man are sacrificed to the 
same extent, whatever may be the character of his 
owner. The slave-owner who recedes from the prop- 
erty principle, does not execute the law, and in so far, 
is not a slave-owner. If the Christian respects his 
slave, and counts him a brother — as we contend he 



110 SLAYEET AND THE CHTJECH. 

must do — the slave law is no longer in force, and lie 
cannot be said to hold a slave. But if he does apply 
the law, and reduce the man to a chattel, what better 
is he than another — than the common run of slave- 
holders ? It is no matter what hand does the deed, if 
it must be done. Robbery, committed by a pious 
man, is just as much robbery as if committed by 
a professional highwayman. The assassin's knife, 
plunged to the heart by the hand of a friend, is not 
less fatal than if driven there by the hand of an enemy. 

The whole argument resolves itself into this propo- 
sition : Man was never made to be a slave, and who- 
ever enslaves him, sins against God. There is no 
avoiding this conclusion, unless by assuming that a 
portion of mankind were created to be slaves, and 
nothing else. It must be right to degrade men, and 
keep them degraded forever, or slavery is a sin, and 
being a sin, it is forbidden, both to the Christian and 
all others. " He that committeth sin is of the devil." 

5. The Christian cannot be a slave-holder, for the 
reason that slavery deranges and even annihilates 
those relations of man to man, and of men to God, 
which Christianity is especially designed to purify 
and conserve. One great object of the gospel is to 
restore fraternal feeling to mankind — to revive the 
principle of brotherhood, and blend nations and races 
together as one family. But we have seen that the 
slave-holder cannot conform to this design without 
sacrificing slavery — to treat the slave as " a brother 
beloved" is to raise him up to the rank of a man, and 
accord to him all the rights which belong to liumani- 






SLAVE-HOLDERS CANNOT BE CHRISTIANS. Ill 

ty. But this is not all. The slave is intended for 
marriage and its various responsibilities, as really as 
other men. The conjugal and parental relations are 
devolved upon him by the appointment of the Crea- 
tor, and no man can lawfully crush him down so as to 
render him incompetent to these positions. Again, 
the slave is designed for citizenship, and must be per- 
mitted to act as a virtuous member of society. His 
obligations in this respect are the same as those of 
other citizens, and they are not to be canceled at the 
bidding of any human authority. Yet further, his 
relations to God and to eternity — or in other words, 
his relations as a moral being — are precisely identical 
with those of the rest of the human race. Slavery 
makes the man a blank, so far as religious obligation 
is concerned. He may pray, or do any other religious 
duty, it is true, if the master permits ; but the crime 
consists in taking from him the right to do these things 
of his own accord and without consultation. As a 
man he is required to serve God, irrespective of hu- 
man permission. He has an equal right with other 
men in all these particulars ; he has rights which no 
Christian can either deny or grant. It would be 
mockery to grant men the right to take care of their 
children, or to pray, since God has formally command- 
ed them to do these things, and no man has any right 
to prevent their doing them. We might as well com- 
mand the sun to rise or the winds to blow. Permis- 
sion here is out of place — we have nothing to permit. 
Where duty has been assigned by the Creator, cither 
by his written word, or by a law of our nature, it is a 



112 SLAVEEY AND THE CHURCH. 

wicked farce to superadd our leave for its perform- 
ance, especially when, by so doing, we imply that the 
right would not just as fully exist without such leave. 
Every act of indulgence accorded by the real slave- 
holder is a blasphemy. He re-enacts the law of God, 
not reverently, and as a matter of solemn obligation, 
but capriciously, and as something that would have 
no force but for his ratification. A higher insult to 
divine authority cannot be conceived. 

But aside from this mockery of granting men per- 
mission to obey God, slavery, by whomsoever admin- 
istered, directly reverses all the established rules of 
virtue and religion — it beats down the lowly, be- 
cause they are low, the poor, because they are poor, 
and the weak, because they are weak. This system, 
instead of teaching men to " bear one another's burden's 
and so fulfill the law of Christ," cruelly heaps upon 
the helpless colored man all the disabilities that law 
can impose, and dooms him to drag out life in the 
character of a brute. Instead of raising him up, and 
enduing him with advantages, as both religion and 
humanity dictate, it strips him of even the natural 
rights that God had conferred upon him in common 
with mankind. Such a system must forever be intol- 
erable to all upright minds. Christians can have no 
more to do with it than they have to do with highway 
robbery and murder. It is impossible to frame any 
plea that shall excuse the slightest connection with 
the abomination. 

Here we leave the argument. If any can show its 
unsoundness, let them do it. But until then, we shall 



SLAVE-IIOLDEKS CAXXOT BE CimiSTIAXS. 113 

continue to regard slave-holders as necessarily exclu- 
ded from the pale of Christianity. That they are not 
Christians, and cannot be, while continuing the prac- 
tice of slavery, is to us just as plain as that the gospel 
of Christ is a system of benevolence. Did Christianity 
sanction rapine, violence, spoliation and oppression — 
did it set apart the African, or any other class of men, 
to receive as their only portion the utmost indignities 
that lawless power can inflict — did it command the 
believer to be the instrument of this infliction — and 
did it not enjoin us to love our neighbor as ourselves — ■ 
then we might admit that slave-holding and religion 
could be united in the same person. 

Perhaps some may think we have advanced far 
enough in this direction. ■ But we must go one step 
farther, however bold it may appear, and affirm that 
slavery and slave-holding are not only incompatible 
with religion, but with manhood itself. To be a slave, 
is to sink below the order of humanity into that of 
brutes. So that, religion aside, slavery is impossible 
to our nature — a man cannot be a man, "in any 
proper sense of the word," and be a slave. 

The same is true of the slave-holder. He descends 
not only below religion, but below all the more hon- 
orable principles of humanity. For instance, it is 
dishonorable, even among men who make no preten- 
sions to religion, to injure the weak and the defence- 
less, or to take advantage of women and children, 
the sick and the lame. But here a poor, weak, 
ignorant African race, whose misfortunes appeal for 
sympathy to every honorable feeling of nature, and 



114 SLAVERY AND THE CHUSCH. 

for whose protection, common honor, to say nothing 
of piety, demands that we should peril our lives, if 
need be, and yet the slave-holder ■ — ■ we mean the bo- 
na tide slave-holder, makes these his prey ! These 
he attacks with all the ferocity of a beast, and strips 
them of every right, merely because he can. Such 
a being outrages the feelings which are congenial 
to humanity, apart from the lofty maxims of Chris- 
tianity. 

So far, therefore, is it from being an act of te- 
merity, or uncharitableness, to affirm that slave-hold- 
ers cannot be Christians, that all consideration of their 
pretensions to religion, is somewhat misplaced. It is 
a condescension even to bestow the slightest atten- 
tion upon claims so evidently preposterous. The 
moral character of the slave-holder does not rise high 
enough to entitle it to such investigation. A being 
so fallen and depraved that all the nobler instincts 
of his nature have ceased to operate, cannot be ranked 
among Christians till he has been created anew, nor 
among civilized men till he is greatly reformed. Such 
brutality as makes women and children slaves for 
life, is repugnant not only to religion and the civil 
law, but to every manly sentiment, and necessarily 
fixes an ineffaceable stain upon its foul perpetrator. 
When such an one — forgetful how much more pol- 
luted he is than the common run of men — seeks to 
be considered a Christian, then Satan himself may 
aspire to the honors of saintship. Slavery is, in fact, 
so gross an offence to humanity, that its removal is 
the province of civilization rather than of religion. 



SLAVERY CANNOT EXIST IN THE CHURCH. 115 

CHAPTER III. 

SLAVERY CANNOT EXIST IN THE CHURCH. 

Of course, if neither slaves nor slave-holders can 
be Christians, slavery can have no existence in the 
Church of Christ. But we allude only to the true or 
invisible Church ; for sinners as well as saints may be 
members of the visible Church. Through the infirm- 
ity of human judgment, and the concealment of sin 
by those who practice it, the bad are often associated 
with the good in Church fellowship. But we are not, 
on this account, to suppose that all are alike Chris- 
tians. Judas, though ranked with the apostles, was 
still only " a devil." The same is true of all the 
wicked, whatever may be their relation to the exter- 
nal Church. Our reasons for affirming that slavery 
cannot exist in the Church, are these : 

1. The Church, to use the language of the Thirty- 
JSme Articles, is " a congregation of faithful men, in 
which the true word of God is preached," &c. Now, 
as lias been shown in the previous chapter, no slave- 
holder can be a faithful man. He must be recreant 
to his duty as the friend of the oppressed, and the 
enemy of oppression — he must degrade those whom 
God would raise up — he must lend himself to the 
State, as an instrument of cruelty to accomplish de- 
signs which the gospel abhors. His own imagined 
justification may be that by thus doing, he mitigates, 
in some degree, the extreme evils which the slave 



116 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

would otherwise suffer, But we have already shown 
the fallacy of this reasoning. The State has no right 
to oppress — no right to make slaves, and, therefore, 
cannot confer this right upon others. Let the case be 
varied ever so slightly, and all will see the monstrous 
absurdity of the thing. Suppose, the State should en- 
act that every man might swear profanely, or steal, 
or commit adultery, at his own option, and without 
any penalty or censure whatever ; would the Chris- 
tian thereby acquire any right to practice these vices % 
Could he participate in them because the civil law 
allowed him to do so % Most certainly he con Id not. 
But suppose, further, that the State enacted that these 
vices might be committed with additional circum- 
stances of atrocity — such as swearing with unusual 
frequency, or with a needless multiplication of unlaw- 
ful words, stealing what the thief does not want, or 
must destroy at once, committing adultery with females 
peculiarly happy in their domestic circumstances, or 
where the disgrace would fall with the greatest weight 
on the family connections. It would be natural for a 
conscientious man, if he should commit these sins at 
all, to do so without the aggravations here specified ; 
but could he practice them even, if he strove to 
avoid the excess which the law enjoined ? Above all, 
would he be justified in practicing them in this tem- 
perate manner, merely to prevent the excess of which 
others less conscientious, by taking advantage of the 
law, might commit? For him to do so, would be 
" to do evil that good might come" — a doctrine point- 
edly reprobated by the word of God, 



SLAVERY CANNOT EXIST IN TIIE CHURCH. 117 

But we will suppose further, that all contingency 
is out of the question — these vices must be committed ; 
either through the corruption of human nature, or from 
some other cause, such " offences must come." Does 
this necessity afford any pretext for their commission ? 
By no means. The " woe " is upon " him by whom 
the offence cometh." The Christian himself is under 
no necessity of this kind, and he may not volunteer 
to do wickedness because others will certainly do 
greater wickedness until God converts them. The 
slave-holder, therefore, whatever may be his inten- 
tions, is doing an unlawful work, and consequently is 
not in the Church. He is a worker of iniquity, and 
the Lord knows him not. He may be outwardly a 
church-member ; he may have prophesied, cast out 
devils, and done many wonderful works in the Lord's 
name, but still is not a Christian, because he does not 
the will of God in abstaining from all unrighteous- 
ness. 

2. Slavery cannot exist in the Church, because the 
Church is holy. We talk of excluding slavery from 
the Church, as though it had really gained a footing 
there. But we might just as well talk of excluding 
drunkenness and murder from the Church — sins 
which all know preclude Christian character, and 
with it exclusion from the spiritual Church. He that 
commits these things may, indeed, have a name to 
live, but is dead while he liveth — spiritually and 
religiously dead, having at most only a dead form 
of godliness. Slavery never had a place in the 
true Church, and never can have, till crime ceas< 



118 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

be an impediment to admission into the fold of Christ. 
So long as " putting off the old man with his deeds " 
is a condition of church-membership, so long must 
slave-holders, with other sinners, "remain in the con- 
gregation of the dead." The slave-holder may felici- 
tate himself on his admission to the visible Church, 
but this shall avail him nothing — his name must be 
written in the Book of Life, before he can be consid- 
ered in the Church, or have any ground of hope. 
Hence the Church is placed far above corruptions of 
this character ; it cannot be invaded by a lax-admin- 
istration of human authority. Men may decree that 
slavery is no bar to religion, but this makes the way 
to heaven no wider — it will not introduce the op- 
pressor into the family of Christ. 

3. But, strictly speaking, slavery is impossible in 
the Church anywhere — yes, impossible even in the 
visible Church. In order to have slaverv, we must 
have a state of things altogether inimical to the 
nature of religion. Popery, by taking on a polit- 
ical element, and by assuming unlawful power, has 
become more nearly a civil than a religious insti- 
tution. It is a political league, not a Church. The 
same is true of any evangelical Church, when it in- 
corporates slave-holding. There must be a lower 
caste — a class of persons distinguished from others by 
the denial of privileges intended for all. The slave 
in the Church is still doomed to ignorance, depen- 
dence, servility, concubinage, and sale — he is the 
same chattel as before, and follows the laws of prop- 
erty just as necessarily as he ever did. The owner- 



SLAVERY CAXXOT EXIST IX TITE CHURCH. 110 

ship of men by members of the Church, is an innova- 
tion fatal to that equality and fraternal regard peculiar 
to such organizations. A Church thus corrupted, 
deserves to be considered as a political oligarchy — it 
is a Church only in name. 

4. It cannot be in the Church, because a genuine 
church-membership is in theory and spirit subversive 
of all unrighteousness. Every wicked act must be 
disclaimed — abhorred. All usurpation and improper 
control over others, is rendered impossible by the very 
constitution of the Christian. He might, as a man 
of the world, buy and sell men, or as a merely formal 
professor, he might "lord it over God's heritage," 
but not as a true Church member. Were there no 
rule against the practice, he could not conform to it, 
inasmuch as he has no heart to such a work. The 
Christian's kindly disposition is not the only preven- 
tive of slavery ; he is, by his position in the Church, 
far too much penetrated with a sense of his own in- 
firmity, unworthiness and dependence, to attempt the 
exercise of slavocratic. functions. A community 
living under the immediate eye of God, with their 
affections set on things above, must be illy prepared 
for the slightest participation in that greedy absorp- 
tion of power which marks slave-holding. Having 
been pardoned and restored to the divine favor wholly 
by grace, how can such people prove so ungracious 
as to rob their fellow men of a single particle of their 
natural rights % In the church, each has a master, 
and each for himself "to his own master standeth or 
falleth." No improper or unholy interference is pos- 



120 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

sible here, without such a derang anient as assimilates 
the Church to other corrupt institutions. Should it 
be said that this argument proves too much, from the 
fact that there are wicked men in all Churches, the 
answer is, then all Churches are in so far corrupt. A 
true Church is not made up partly of the good and 
partly of the bad, for none but the good — the chil- 
dren of God — are rightfully members of even the 
visible Church. Why do we exclude sinners, if they 
have a right in the Church ? If they have no right 
there, the Church is injured by their presence, and 
ought to consult her own safety by separating " the 
precious from the vile." 

5. If slavery may be in the Church militant, then 
it may be in the Church triumphant. Nothing should 
be tolerated on earth that is not holy enough for 
Heaven. But can we conceive of slavery in Para- 
dise % Will the disgusting, barbaric system transmit 
itself into the immediate presence of God, and there 
riot in eternal oppression? If men may be fit for 
Heaven, and yet be slaves or slave-holders, — if, with 
this character, they may occupy a place in the Church 
here, we cannot see why they may not hold these re- 
lations through eternity. They certainly will have 
the same character in a future state that they had in 
this — if they die slaves and slave-holders, we know 
not what shall make them more pure, or place them 
in different relations in the world to come. These 
relations being good enough for time, may be pro- 
nounced good enough for the eternal state. Such is 
the astonishing absurdity which must follow from ad- 



SLAVERY CANNOT EXIST IN THE CI1U1H. li. 121 

mining that slavery may have existence in the 
Church. 

6. The constitution of the Church, however, is de- 
cisive upon the point — it determines the relations of 
members, in spite of all disturbing causes. Men 
cannot come into the house of God as they juease, 
and make it what they please ; the power to effect a 
revolution is not in their hands. Here, at least, in his 
own house, " the Lord sitteth King forever." The 
members of the Church are brethren ; they have one 
master, even Christ, and all are brethren of one fam- 
ily. This excludes the possibility of slave ownership. 
All are Christ's, and none can claim aught as his own 
that belongs to another. There are no lawless, no 
unjust, no unbrotherly acquisitions or possessions here. 
The law of brotherhood is the great organic law of 
the Church ; men can enter into its communion as 
brothers, but in no other capacity. They can neither 
buy, nor sell, nor own one another, nor yet those out 
of the Church, any more than children of the same 
family can buy, or sell, or own each other as chattels 
personal. 

7. To the Church, slavery is and must be unknown, 
except as one of the most criminal and grievous out- 
breakings of human depravity. It contravenes ev- 
ery purpose of religion, and defeats every object 
for which the Church was brought into existence. 
If slavery could have a place in the Church, reli- 
gion would be an idle delusion — a grotesque ab- 
surdity. A reformatory and humanizing institution 
that should tolerate the worst possible despotism, and 

6 



122 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

an aggregation of the greatest crimes ever committed 
would deserve the scorn and contempt of mankind — 
if, indeed, it were not beneath contempt. 

Kone of the apologies offered in extenuation of re- 
ligious slave-holding have any weight, They are only 
had excuses for a bad cause. The favorite plea of 
mercy we have exploded, as a most unfounded abuse 
of terms. There can be no mercy in slave-holding. 
Besides the plea, if not wanting in sincerity and hon- 
esty, is utterly fallacious. Christian slave-holders do 
not change the nature of the business at all. Their 
slaves are still chattels — still subject to the laws of 
property — still unable to marry or to own property, 
or to obtain an education, or to serve God. Slavery 
is slavery, whether in the Church or out of it. It is a 
crushing despotism, which the Christian is equally 
unable either to endure himself, or inflict on others. 
It is a vile abuse, as repugnant to Christianity as any 
other crime peculiar to the most debased heathen na- 
tions. The idea of adopting it into the Church, is an 
extravagance of error — a madness and desperation 
of purpose that has no parallel. Happily for the 
reputation of Christianity, its benign principles are 
too well known to suffer materially from these at- 
tempts to link its destiny with this rank and enduring 
off-shoot of pagan cruelty. A system which teaches 
that man was made in the image of God — made to 
be holy and happy — is grossly slandered when rep- 
resented as patronizing such a shameless crime as 
slavery. 



PART III. 
DUTY OF THE CHURCH U RELATION TO SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER I. 

EXTIRPATION OF SLAVERY FROM THE CHURCH. 

Ha veto affirmed, and, as we believe, demonstrated 
that " slavery is a sin, a great sin, and a sin under all 
circumstances," it would be somewhat worse than idle 
to affect any difficulty in determining the duty of the 
Church towards it. What the duty of the Church is 
in relation to crime, can never be doubtful. Even 
slave-holders have no doubt here. Their controversy 
is solely with the premises — not with the conclusion 
to which we arrive. If slavery is a sin necessarily 
subversive of Christian character, no one — not even 
the most guilty offender — can object to its immedi- 
ate exclusion from the Church. The duty of the 
Church is precisely the same towards all the varied 
catalogue of crimes — renunciation and exclusion are 
the only lawful treatment that can possibly be ac- 
corded to them. So far as the slave-holder is con- 



124 SLAVEEY AND THE CHTTKCH. 

cerned, the treatment due is the same as that which 
is due to the adulterer or the thief, the burglar or the 
murderer. But, by the extirpation of slavery, we 
mean still more. It is not enough that slave-holders 
be expelled ; the man who consents to be a slave 
equally deserves expulsion. lie had no right to 
yield himself to human authority, to the exclusion 
of the authority of God ; nor had he any right to 
part with endowments and faculties which the Cre- 
ator had bestowed upon him as a human being, 
and take a station among the brutes. The man 
or woman who will do this is not prepared for 
Church membership, and should not be permitted to 
assume obligations, the fulfillment of which is ren- 
dered impossible. The Church requires chastity in 
its members, but how can the female be chaste when 
she relinquishes the right to control her own conduct, 
and becomes subject to her master, or to any whom 
he may appoint, in all things ? If her owner insists 
upon defiling her, it is unquestionably her duty as a 
slave to submit, and if she does not submit, the mas- 
ter can inflict what punishment he pleases — if she 
resists with becoming spirit, he is authorized to kill 
her at once. The Church requires parents to take 
care of their children, but how can slave parents do 
this, when their children are taken from them and 
sold to the slave trader ? Thus we might specify all 
the varied duties exacted by the Church, and slavery 
would be found to render them impracticable. For 
this reason, no slave should be allowed in the Church. 
Unless persons can throw off the shackles of bondage 



EXTIRPATION OF SLAVERY FROM TIIE CnURCH. 125 

far enough to be Christ's freemen, it is a sad perver- 
sion, to devolve upon them the responsibilities of 
Christianity. If they are to be kept degraded to the 
condition of brutes, nothing unsuitable for brutes 
should be exacted of them. Christianity was de- 
signed for human beings, and we must bring the slave 
up to tin's, his natural position, or deny him a place 
in the Church. It would be deemed a profanation to 
take horses and cattle into the Church, but if we re- 
duce men to the same condition, they become equally 
unfit for Church relations. 

Slavery, it is true, is only factitiously and outward- 
ly in the Church. But this merely external connec- 
tion is reprehensible, and ought to be repudiated. It 
is a great scandal that so vile a sin is allowed even a 
nominal relation to a body professing holiness. Either 
slavery should be put down, or all sin should be tol- 
erated. Few will object to this position, provided we 
have reference only to the worst kind of slave-holders, 
and the most besotted of slaves. It is conceded that 
these are not Christians, and, therefore, ought not to 
be Church members. But, it is insisted that many 
are involuntary slave-holders and slaves, and by con- 
sequence, not chargeable with the guilt so evidently 
resting upon others. A satisfactory reply to this al- 
legation is at hand. Do we excuse men from the 
commission of crimes merely because they suffered 
themselves to be enticed into them ? Is the man who 
involuntarily gets drunk, or involuntarily kills anoth- 
er, excusable? Never — unless he did all in his 
power to prevent such acts. He may be less guilty, 



126 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

perhaps, than if he had deliberately planned and ex- 
ecuted these crimes, but he is guilty of not control- 
ling his powers. The will is ours, and we are respon- 
sible for its exercise ; but not the will alone. It is 
the province of the will to regulate the other powers, 
and keep them from sin ; if it does not effect this, the 
individual is pronounced to be guilty — his involunta- 
riness is no exculpation. A man must not lend him- 
self as an instrument for others to use in the accom- 
plishment of purposes which his own judgment and 
conscience condemn. These involuntary slaves and 
slave-holders are, therefore, guilty ; they have not 
resisted an odious system, but have allowed it to draw 
them into crime. 

It has been said that non-slave-holding is, in many 
instances, utterly impossible — that a man may have 
slaves left him by will, and without his knowledge or 
consent. This is simply a fallacy. No man can be a 
slave-holder, any more than he can be a murderer, 
without his knowledge or consent. Slave property 
may be devolved upon any man, but that does not 
oblige him to accept it. He can refuse to acknowl- 
edge or treat such persons as his slaves — can set 
them at liberty, or leave them to be disposed of by 
others, as the law may direct. He is no more obliged 
to own slaves contrary to his will, than he is to own 
any other kind of property. Until the man accepts 
the property as his own, and receives it in the char- 
acter which the law gives to it, he is not a slave-holder 
in the proper sense of the word. The same is true of 
the slave. ~No man is a slave, merely because the law 



EXTIRPATION OF SLAVERY FROM THE CHURCH. 327 

pronounces him sucli. lie can only be a slave by the 
actual enforcement of the law. The law is naught to 
him until it takes effect, and strikes him from among 
men. This may be prevented by that stubborn re- 
sistance with which every human being is bound to 
meet enactments that contravene the laws of God. 

But if slavery is to be extirpated from the Church, 
there must be a rule to this effect. Many sins are so 
well known, and their character so little in dispute, 
that ecclesiastical legislation is unnecessary : nothing 
is wanted but action. Ko Church presumes to enact 
a rule against robbery or murder, and yet all Church- 
es promptly expel members thus offending. "Were 
slavery fully understood, a Church law prohibiting it 
would be equally xiseless. At present, we need an 
express prohibitory statute in the Church, in order to 
secure action. The moral sense of community is not 
sufficiently developed in this direction, to effect the 
removal of the guilty without some provision of this 
kind. "With such a law embodied in Church disci- 
pline as expressive of the sense of the membership, 
the administration could go on with due regard to all 
exceptional cases. It might be found, occasionally, as 
is ofun the case in other instances of alleged crime, 
that the offence was only nominal. Thus the truly 
innocent would be acquitted, while the guilty were 
condemned, to the great relief of the Church. Until 
slave-holding, under all possible circumstances, is re- 
garded as a crime, and so defined upon the statutory 
records of the Church, we shall see no reform in this 
matter. "Without a specific rule, there is no way of 



128 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

reaching any enormity practiced nncler the slave code. 
The master, being permitted to hold slaves, must, of 
course, be permitted to hold them as other men do — 
that is to say, he must be allowed to execute the slave 
law in all its details. He cannot be expected to op- 
press men without availing himself of oppressive 
laws. But if slavery is outlawed, and declared to be 
incompatible with Church relations, the Church then 
becomes judge in the case, and merely nominal slave- 
holding, if any such there be, will appear in its true 
character. As things are at present, slavery is sanc- 
tioned by not being condemned. The absence of law 
against it, proves that toleration was intended. And 
if, in given cases, slave-holding is rendered merely 
nominal by the force of those elevated precepts which 
Christianity inculcates, the Church gains no credit, 
and deserves none, because she did not prohibit an 
evil so clearly repugnant to the principles of religion. 
If slavery is modified and reformed so as to comport, 
in any degree, with humanity, it is purely accidental. 
The Church has made no provision for such a result. 
Slave-holders are left to do as they please ; they riot in 
unbounded liberty, and will continue to do so while 
slavery is tolerated. The sum is this : Slavery is sin, 
and the Church, following the word of God, condemns 
all sin, but yet does not specifically condemn slavery. 
This, as we have said, would be no detriment, were 
slavery fully understood and promptly repelled, as 
are other great sins ; but it is not, and the only rem- 
edy is to enact a prohibitory rule. 



EXTIErATION OF SLAVERY FROM THE WORLD. 129 



CHAPTER II. 

EXTIRPATION OF SLAVERY FROM THE WORLD. 

The influence of the Church should extend far be- 
yond its own communion. When ecclesiastical rules 
are right, and rightly administered, their effect cannot 
be limited to the Church alone ; it will be felt in the 
world, and will powerfully contribute to the subver- 
sion of every species of wickedness. The Church 
must be the assailant of all sin, and hot merely of that 
which is within its own pale. Its mission is to estab- 
lish the kingdom of God on earth by the banishment 
of unrighteousness, and the introduction of universal 
holiness. 

But as slavery, though sinful, is a legal institution, 
it is claimed by some that the Church cannot oppose 
it without improperly descending to secular strife ; 
and above all, it is claimed that such an opposition 
would be an unlawful interference with the functions 
of civil government. The absurdity of these objec- 
tions we shall briefly expose. 

That piety which overlooks crime under a pretence 
of refined or elevated spirituality, is of a very suspi- 
cious character. Pharisaism and Jesuitism, in their 
murderous, diabolical career, have never been want- 
ing in precisely this kind of discrimination. They 
have set at naught all principles of justice and hu- 
manity for the avowed purpose of carrying religion 



130 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

forward by other than the usual methods, or of uni- 
ting it with character in the absence of practical mor- 
ality. Thus, while they were planning assassinations 
and robberies, committing adulteries and perjuries, 
wallowing in all the debasement of Machiavelian in- 
trigues — they were models of devoutness, and pillars 
of the Church. Such spiritualism must not be mista- 
ken for religion. It is a morbid, hypocritical piety, 
and worthy of the deepest abhorrence. And it is so 
mainly for the reason that the common duties of life 
are divorced. Those ordinary and lesser virtues pecu- 
liar to social, every-day life — those duties which man 
owes to man — are eschewed, and in place of them, 
we have nothing but blind devotion to the Church. 
These are characters trained for the Church as a sys- 
tem, and bound to build it up regardless of religious 
obligation. Forgetting the first principles of the re- 
ligion they profess, and devoting themselves wholly to 
Church extension, they vainly attempt to build up the 
cause of God by trampling his own holy precepts un- 
der their feet. This is done for the Church ! They 
compass sea and land to make proselytes, and those 
proselytes, when made, are only so much the more 
children of hell. Yet this is the inevitable effect of 
all attempts to propagate religion by neglecting rigid 
attention to all kinds of practical morality. If, for 
the sake of extending the Church, or keeping it free 
from secular contamination, we pass over as unworthy 
of notice, the cruel injustice inflicted by slavery, the 
effect will be, not spirituality, but the reverse ■ — car- 
nality and death. The Church cannot wink at these 



EXTIRPATION OF SLAVERY FROM THE WORLD. 131 

wrongs and keep herself pure. It is the business of 
the Church to teach men their duty in all the rela- 
tions of life. To pass by temporal affairs, and over- 
look minor duties, with a view to higher interests, is 
quite consistent with the gospel, provided no real in- 
justice be done. But we must not leave men in 
deadly sins, we must not sanction vice in our efforts 
to teach virtue, nor kill the body to preserve the soul. 
Here is where this description of religious propa- 
gandists signally fail. They incorporate the precious 
with the vile ; they sanctify the sin of slavery, and 
give it a place in the Church, rather than encounter 
the opposition of slave-holders. 

2. The conflict with civil law, where such law is 
corrupt, is absolutely unavoidable. But still, it is 
said, " we have nothing to do with government. 
Slavery is the creature of law, and we must obey the 
powers that be." All this may be very convenient 
for Jesuitical purposes, but no Christian can, for a 
moment, tolerate such a sentiment. Suppose the civil 
law should prohibit the worship of God. Would it 
not be our duty to oppose the law even unto death I 
2sone can deny that it would. How, then, can it be 
said that we have nothing to do with government but 
to submit implicitly to its requirements ? If we may 
resist goverment in one case, we may in another, 
provided both are equally wrong. Hence there is 
no way to make the authority of the civil law any 
apology for slavery, but by supposing that the law is 
right. We must take for granted that Blavery is not 
a sin, and that the law is right because it exacts no- 



132 SLAVERY AND THE CHTJECH. 

tiling wrong. On no other principle can a refusal to 
interfere with the law, be justified. Unfortunately, 
however, those who plead the authority of law, ac- 
knowledge that slavery is wrong. They do not per- 
ceive the fatal character of this admission ; surely, 
they are not ready to do all the wrongs that law 
might possibly enjoin, but are contented to do this 
wrong. If they would reflect for a moment, it could 
not escape them that the law had no more authority 
to uphold slavery than it has to uphold any or all 
other crimes. 

Let it be remembered that all the martyrs were the 
victims of unrighteous civil law. They bled because 
they would not violate their consciences by obeying 
man rather than God. It was not enough for them 
to know that human government required certain 
things — " they confessed that they were pilgrims and 
strangers on earth," and consequently, that the law 
of God was supreme over them, and utterly forbid 
their doing wrong, no matter who might command 
to the contrary. 

That slavery is established by law, we must admit ; 
but this does not, in the least, prove its innocence. 
Laws often ordain vice as well as virtue, and the 
Christian who attempts to do all that the civil law 
allows, will often find himself grossly at variance 
with the gospel of Christ. The law of God enjoins 
holiness, and all human laws which either command 
or tolerate wickedness, are not only of no authority, 
but deserve to be rejected with abhorrence. Happily 
the slave law is only permissive ; no man is required 



EXTIRPATION OF SLAVEEY FEOM TnE WOELD. 133 

to hold slaves. It is, therefore, evidence of sometl ling 
worse than blind reverence for civil law, when Chris- 
tians condescend to the practice of slavery. It shows 
a love for slave-holding — a proclivity for crime which 
gladly seeks shelter under the umbrage of human au- 
thority. This is the more evident, as the same class 
of persons who are so remarkably reverent towards 
the civil law wherein it establishes slavery, have no 
hesitation in opposing the same law in other respects. 
If the government should trample upon their rights 
in any respect they would not withhold the most in- 
dignant remonstrance. But when the usurpation is 
in their favor — ■ when the law gives the colored man's 
services to them for little or nothing, and makes him 
an article of property, then they bow to law witli 
strange precision, and preach against all resistance 
of the horrible statute. When the advocates of 
slavery, and of this passive, indiscriminate submis- 
sion to human government, are ready to become 
slaves themselves, or to obey the law in all things, 
however palpable its wickedness, then we may count 
them sincere, if not wise. 



134 SLAVERY AND TIIE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY DEMANDED BY AN IMPARTIAL 
ADMINISTRATION OF CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 

There are many sins not named either in the Bible 
or in the canons of the Church, for which men are 
excluded. It avails nothing, therefore, that slavery- 
is not specifically prohibited. The general rule in all 
Churches is, holiness in all things. This rule abun- 
dantly justifies the exclusion of everything sinful, 
whether specified or not. As Church discipline is 
now administered, it takes effect only in particular 
cases. The robber meets with exemplary punishment, 
and so do the extortioner and the thief — that is, they 
meet with punishment when these acts occur apart 
from slavery. But when the slave law sanctions the 
robbery, the theft, and the extortion, all combined, 
and carried to such an extent as they are never car- 
ried by the professional bandit, the deed is passed 
over in silence. In the case of adultery, or criminal 
intercourse of the sexes, we have a still more striking 
instance of injustice. These crimes are rigidly ex- 
cluded from all orthodox Churches, except as slavery 
introduces them. Slaves not being permitted to mar- 
ry, must of necessity live together without marriage. 
Hence the Church tolerates this unlawful commerce 
of the sexes among slaves, as she does not among oth- 
ers. There is no application of discipline to slavery, 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY DE^IANDED. 135 

in this respect. Promiscuous, unbounded licentious- 
ness exists without any possible check. The Church 
may repeat its form of marriage over the slave and 
his companion, but the law heeds it not, and the 
parties so married are just as remorselessly sold and 
separated, and polluted, as if no such ceremony had 
been performed. The slave husband and wife are on- 
ly such in name — the law knows them as property, 
and nothing more. They live together as property, 
and may be sold at any moment without the slightest 
reference to the vain ceremony which pretended to 
make them one forever. We question not the motives 
of those who thus marry slaves, but we pronounce the 
act a most egregious trifling with sacred things. Thus, 
despite of all rules against concubinage, the Church 
is compelled to tolerate it wherever slavery exists 
within its pale. £so administration can correct the 
evil without removing the cause — the slave must 
cease to be property before he can be married, as 
marriage is affirmed only of human beings. 

Besides this illicit intercourse between the sexes, 
which the Church is obliged to sanction in the slave, 
while she condemns it in everybody else, there is also 
a necessary neglect of domestic and parental duties. 
But says the apostle, " if any provide not for his own, 
and especially those of his house, he hath denied the 
faith, and is worse than an infidel." While the 
Church generally is held strictly responsible for the 
performance of this Christian duty, all slaves are 
allowed to neglect it altogether, as, indeed, they i 
must be. The slave has nothing, and can acquire 



136 SLAVEEY AND THE CHIJECH. 

nothing ; his family — so called — are, therefore, wholly 
dependent upon others, and the law which applies to 
all other members of the Church, becomes inoperative 
upon him. The Church can do no better than to pass 
him by, while she allows the slave-holder to claim 
both his body and soul as chattels personal. But the 
lack of providing for a family in mere temporalities, 
is not the worst — the offspring of this universal con- 
cubinage must grow up without parental control or 
care. The parents cannot fulfill even the most obvious 
duties towards their children. The master has the 
only real authority, and whatever may be the design 
or wishes of the parents touching the regulation of 
their children, nothing is practicable but at the in- 
stance of the proprietor. And as it is for his interest 
to have all slave-children kept in ignorance, that they 
may with greater convenience be kept slaves, culti- 
vation is out of the question. The parents are power- 
less ; and the owner having no design but to degrade, 
the Church is obliged to witness the slave-growing 
process in all its stages — nay, more, is obliged to be 
the patron and approver of the abomination. Disci- 
pline there cannot be in the case, for the slave is sur- 
rendered to just the fate which is thus meted out to 
him. In consenting to tolerate slavery in the Church, 
we give our sanction to all the degradation necessary 
to keep the institution unimpaired. The slave-breed- 
ers of Yirginia and Maryland who stock the Southern 
market, have Church authority for their infernal busi- 
ness. The children whom they thus raise and sell, 
were permitted to grow up just as other slaves are, 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY DEMANDED. 137 

that is, fitted for slavery. "Were the Church to object 
to this rearing of slaves ; were she to insist that no 
child should he kept degraded in this horrible man- 
ner, the institution of slavery would soon be at an 
end. 

It is almost equally impossible to administer disci- 
pline among the slave-holders themselves, even setting 
aside the immorality of slavery itself. As slaves are 
not allowed to be witnesses in any case against a white 
person, the slave-holder may practice any enormity 
without the slightest danger of expulsion from the 
Church, unless some one besides slaves can be brought 
to testify against him. Wrongs inflicted on slaves, 
a class peculiarly exposed to every species of abuse, 
are, of course, seldom actionable. ISTo cruelty, or 
debauchery, or profanity, or falsehood towards a slave, 
has any reasonable chance of correction. It is easy 
to practice the greatest crimes, and keep them forever 
out of the reach, if not out of the knowledge, of the 
Church. Slave-holding Church members, therefore, 
constitute an exception to all rules of morality, and 
to all Church discipline. They are left to do as they 
please with their slaves, save when others than slaws 
are present. ISTone but slave-holders ever had such 
indulgence, and it is not possible that ecclesiastical 
discipline should be much better than a farce, while 
crippled in this extraordinary manner. 

But we will not insist on minor objections. Tho 
grand reason for the abolition of slavery in the Church 
is, that without it no sufficient standard of purity can 
ever be attained. The acts of other men arc subjec- 



138 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

ted to careful supervision, and visited with appropri- 
ate censure ; but the slave-holder escapes uncensured. 
His conduct must pass without inspection. Though 
slavery is " the sum of all villanies," it may not be 
investigated and adjudged like other crimes. It is at 
once classed among venial faults, and the Church 
covers it with a mantle of charity. Justice demands 
that slavery be analyzed and classified — that its es- 
sential character shall be its justification. Now it 
stands upon prescription, and though marked in every 
part with the greatest atrocities, no censure is inflicted, 
because the institution is uncondemned. The slave- 
holder may steal all that a man has, and the man 
himself, but it is no sin, and the Church is quiescent. 
But let the non-slave-holder pilfer even a single shil- 
ling, and he is promptly excluded from religious soci- 
ety. Is this impartial ? Is it equitable to punish 
severely the less guilty, while the greatest culprits 
are allowed to escape with impunity ? 

The Church legislates in vain against the pec cadil- 
loes of its non-slave-holding members, while the* cry 
of the oppressed is suffered to pass unheeded. It is 
impossible to establish virtue in communities where 
the greatest crimes are either openly or secretly abet- 
ted ; the most that can be attained, under such cir- 
cumstances, is to follow in the steps of the Pharisees, 
who paid tithes " of mint and rue, and passed over 
judgment and the love of God." Nothing but the 
externals of religion, can have any existence in the 
heart or life until all sin is put away. Let slavery 
be made an exception because the law wills it or the 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY DEMANDED. 139 

people desire it, .and all evangelical influence is at an 
end. We might as well seek to unite piety with 
blasphemy, as with slavery. Perhaps the religions 
blasphemer might be a shade more decent than the 
avowed infidel, but his crime would be the same in 
substance, and equally fatal. So the religious slave- 
holder may be less heartless in crushing men down 
to brutes, but, as he accomplishes the same result, he 
must incur the same guilt as the most unprincipled 
oppressor. 

Upon the whole, neither religion nor Church disci- 
pline can be maintained in connection with this evil. 
The former is superficial to the last extent, and the 
latter is downright mockery. It is of no use to preach 
holiness, and countenance villany — none, whatever, 
to be " valiant in words," and yet so pusillanimous in 
deeds, as to spare the greatest atrocities. Decency 
requires that religion should be abandoned entirely, 
or else have its principles applied fairly and impar- 
tially. It is a very needless contempt of Christianity 
to expel men from the Church for common robbery 
and theft, while we retain in good standing the man- 
owner and man-stealer, and the trafficker in the souls 
and bodies of those for whom Christ shed his blood. 
This rottenness corrupts the Church to its centre, and 
sets at defiance every effort to produce moral sound- 
ness. "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart 
faint," and ever will be so long as slavery is tolerated. 
Such a vile agglomeration of the greatest crimes — such 
a mass of moral putrescence — cannot but carry death 
to everything connected with it. The Church is com- 



140 SLAVEEY AND THE CHURCH. 

missioned to teach not simply stern justice — the ex- 
actest equity — between man and man, but to inspire 
the most devoted kindness, the most tender sympathy, 
and the most pure love : and if, with this high com- 
mission, it cannot elevate men above the ferocity, the 
barbarism, the wanton cruelty, and the immeasurable 
injustice of slavery, we may pronounce its claims as 
a reformatory agent, utterly unfounded. If it cannot 
or will not correct' so palpable a wrong as slavery, it 
cannot, with decency, assume to improve the morals 
of mankind in any respect. It is out of all character 
to teach honesty and connive at dishonesty — nay, 
worse, to teach honesty in minor things, and teach 
dishonesty in things of the highest consequence. 
Such perverseness may ally itself with the mere form 
of religion, and may consist, perhaps, with the sem- 
blance of ecclesiastical discipline ; but it can never 
have place in the true Church, nor abide for a mo- 
ment a righteous administration. Slavery is a moun- 
tain of guilt that must sink down before the order 
of the Church can be observed ; and were there no 
word in all the Bible against it — were the several 
crimes of which it is but the aggregate, unnamed — 
still the duty of cultivating purity would necessarily 
array every Christian in eternal hostility to an insti- 
tution so contemptible in spirit, and so debasing in 
practice. 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 141 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL TO THE PEACE 
AND UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 

It is believed by many that all discussion on the 
subject of slavery, and especially all attempts to ex- 
clude slavery from the Church, are subversive of 
peace, and productive of secession. That these ap- 
prehensions are wholly unfounded, is quite evident. 
But unfounded as they are, they have been industri- 
ously used to bring into discredit every effort to dis- 
cuss the question of slavery. Those who would not 
be silent, have been charged as disturbers of the 
peace of Zion — as ambitious aspirants and reckless 
dis unionists. The Church is supposed to be endan- 
gered and ready to fall to pieces, whenever the subject 
of slavery is mentioned. Against these idle fears, and 
these unjust imputations, we enter our protest. 

Secession is always possible, inasmuch as men may 
secede with or without cause, there being no law that 
can keep them in the Church, contrary to their wishes. 
But the bare possibility of secession does not prove 
even its probability, much less its necessity. Why, 
then, the cry of secession ? It looks to us like at- 
tempting to break down the inquiry by an approbrious 
suggestion — as though investigation would be defeat, 
and the discussion must be stifled by connecting it 
with something odious. This is a common, but not 



142 SLAVERY AND THE CHUUCH. 

very profound way of carrying a point, where the 
cause is bad and cannot be sustained by fair means. 
To give a man a bad name, will often injure him with 
the public, or exasperate him ; the first leads to dis- 
couragement, the second to indiscretion. This early, 
wide-spread noise about secession, may not have been 
designed to forestall public opinion, but whether de- 
signed or not, its effect will naturally be the same. 
It is a very cheap mode of warfare — it requires 
neither learning nor talents to call hard names, and 
breathe suspicion. 

And can it be that there is no disposition to meet 
this question on its own merits 1 Must sober discus- 
sion be put down by the ribald cry of secession ? If 
so, what better evidence could we have that the ad- 
vocates of pro-slavery cannot maintain their ground % 
They are conscious of the weakness of their cause, or 
they never would seek to substitute vituperation for 
argument. We do not believe the Church will be 
satisfied to dispose of the subject in this way. Slave- 
ry is among us, and our relation to it is not a trivial 
matter, to be passed over carelessly or contemptuous- 
ly. A sneer and a fling will not answer. We must 
have good reasons for slave-holding in the Church, or 
abandon it forever. If the practice can be defended 
by reason and Scripture, it is due to the Church that 
it should be so defended. But if it cannot be thus 
defended, the fact ought to be known, that the evil 
may be put away at once. It has been too much the 
fashion to stave off inquiry on this subject, as though 
things might be suffered to go on as they are, and ev- 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 143 

ery effort at reform were a willful blow at the peace 
of the Church. Prescription thus becomes the su- 
preme authority. Justice, mercy and truth are set 
aside, to conciliate the slave interest, and with the 
vain hope of making " peace where there is no peace." 
In order to this, a course of treatment such as would 
not be tolerated in any other case, is continually re- 
sorted to, and the trick — for it is nothing else — will, 
perhaps, succeed with some, but we are confident that 
the public at large will not be duped by an artifice so 
exceedingly shallow. 

That the slave is wronged, is a conceded fact. Why, 
then, this pertinacious resistance to all inquiry into 
the measure and character of his wrongs. The Church 
sustains a certain relation to slavery, and if slavery 
be " evil, without mixture or intermission," it illy 
becomes the hiovhest moral institution in the universe 
to pass over it lightly. There ought to be deep and 
prayerful scrutiny here, if anywhere, and by the 
Church, if by any institution under heaven. It is 
not a small matter to keep such an immense moral 
evil — such a great national and individual sin — 
pressed, age after age, ivpon the heart of the Church. 
However pure the Church may be at first, it cannot 
fail to become corrupted by such a foul embrace. 
The loathsome vices of civil authority will surely 
prove infectious, and the, Church will be as the State. 
Circumstances compel us to believe that the deadly 
virus has already taken effect. The fear of discussion, 
the naked and stupid dependence upon prescription 
instead of argument, the unjust and shameless cry of 



144 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

secession — are ominous of a sad decline in morals, 
and wholly unworthy of Christianity. Such an exhi- 
bition never takes place till a moral paralysis has 
supervened. 

"We come now to one of the main objects of this 
chapter, which is, to answer the following question : 
Has the anti-slavery movement any tendency to se- 
cession ? And we hope to show that if there is such 
a tendency, it is, at least, not on the part of those who 
advocate the exclusion of slavery. 

1. There is nothing in the nature of the subject to 
induce secession. Slavery is but a sin, aud to put 
away sin is the professed aim of every Church regu- 
lation — it is the one work of all Church discipline. 
Unless it can be shown that there is something pecu- 
liarly explosive in ceasing from slavery, we can see 
no reason to apprehend division or alienation in any 
part of our work. Breaking off from this iniquity is, 
on the contrary, a highly conservative movement, as 
all holiness tends to union. Secession is fostered by 
vice, not by virtue ; active reform is conservatism, 
but stolid inaction is decay and death. Again, slave- 
ry, as it exists in the Church, is either right or wrong : 
if right, it will surely bear investigation — it will lose 
nothing by the most rigid inquiry ; but if wrong, who 
would wish to cover it up ? All we ask is, that the 
truth may come to light ; that a bad practice may be 
condemned, or a good one approved. Is there any- 
thing preposterous or unreasonable in this ? Do not 
candor and common honesty require that the relation 
of the Church to slaveiy should be openly and freely 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 145 

examined by every one of its members ? How else 
shall our people have a good conscience in the mat- 
ter? To discuss slavery is, or should be, the same as 
to discuss any other question. The Christian is bound 
to know that what he does is right — nay, even more, 
that it will appear right, for he must "abstain from 
all appearance of evil." lie may not plead custom, 
he is not privileged to do as others do, but is under 
the most solemn obligations to know that his acts are 
conformed to the law of God. 

2. Neither is there any tiling in discussion itself to 
cause secession. IsLen may examine epiestions of 
morality and duty without the least offence, and with 
great profit, as is proved by every evangelical volume 
or sermon given to the world. It is not bare discus- 
sion of religious subjects that produces evil, else we 
must cease from all doctrinal investigations — we 
must neither refute heresy nor vindicate truth. If 
evil arises, then, it can only come from the manner 
of conducting the controversy. An angry, unchari- 
table, supercilious debate would be injurious, because 
these tempers are in themselves an evil, and can only 
lead to evil. But there is not the least necessity for 
the indulgence of such dispositions. They are as un- 
suitable and foreign to this as to all other grave and 
important subjects of inquiry; they have no more in- 
timate connection with slavery than with drunkenness 
and avarice. Guilt, however, dreads exposure, and 
an irrascible temper, in those who plead for slave-hol- 
ding in the Church, has too often borne Btronger v 
timony against the practice than all the arguments of 

7 



14:6 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

Its opponents. A feverish anxiety to suppress all de- 
bate, and a sensitiveness that rushes to desperation at 
the very mention of change, are indications not to be 
mistaken. " Every one that cloeth evil hateth the 
light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should 
be reproved." Those who are confident of the recti- 
tude of their principles and practices, always invite 
scrutiny — they challenge that investigation which 
all who have not this confidence so much dread. It 
is evident, therefore, that the searchings of the pres- 
ent anti-slavery movement will not disturb any who 
should not be disturbed. The inquiry must be grate- 
ful to those who think themselves unjustly accused, 
and troublesome only to such as dare not come to the 
light. It will tend to union, and not to disunion. 

3. The condition of those engaged in the movement 
is not such as to invite secession. Disappointed aspi- 
rants, idle speculatists, and visionary enthusiasts are 
one thing ; cool, determined, practical men are an- 
other. There is no excitement, no disaffection, no 
haste ; the movement is oue of sober second thought. 
It is an honest and frank declaration of sentiment, 
accompanied by a firm determination to support the 
declaration by corresponding action. But if those 
who believe slave-holding should not be tolerated in 
the Church, cannot effect an amendment in this par- 
ticular, they have sense enough, we trust, to know 
that time and perseverance are requisite in all great 
undertakings. Should they fail now, they will suc- 
ceed hereafter, and can afford to wait. Men who are 
in a hurry are not fitted for great achievements. Re- 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 147 

form is a life work ; it is not tlic accident of a day, 
but the patient, unwavering effort of a whole exist- 
ence. That men of unflinching firmness and subdued 
expectation, of clear perception and moral force, will 
think it wise to leave the Church for this cause, we 
do not believe. Secession is too extreme a remedy 
for such a disease. The very mention of it is an in- 
sult. It implies that men do not know enough to de- 
sire and labor for an object without bolting from the 
Church, in case of failure. "We despise secession, 
where the liberty of working is allowed. It is down- 
right folly ; for once out of the Church, all hope of 
benefiting it is at an end. Nothing would please the 
slave-holder better than to have those opposed to him 
leave the Church ; he could then have it all his own 
way. Besides, we are not for deserting the sick. 
Slavery is a moral disease, and while it preys upon 
the vitals of the Church, we ought to be peculiarly 
devoted and unshrinking in our attachment. A friend 
should never be forsaken in the hour of need. 

4. Secession must have a motive, but there is no pos- 
sible motive in this case. AVe have just as much lib- 
erty to oppose slavery in the Church, as we could 
have out of it. There is no restriction whatever. 
The Church meditates unsparing opposition, and in- 
vites us to it. The Methodist Episcopal Church, in 
particular, asks, " What shall be done for the extirpa- 
tion of the evil of slavery?" and bids us respond. 
Shall we meanly shrink from the work solicited at our 
hands ? Shall we abscond in the hour of peril and of 
action ? Did Luther forsake the Catholic Church, or 



148 BLAVEEY AND THE CHUKCH. 

did that Church forsake him ? The latter. Did Wes- 
ley forsake the English Church ? Never. Both had 
other work to do. They hazarded life to restore the 
fallen — they labored long and arduously to build up 
the waste places, the " desolations of many genera- 
tions." So should every reformer do, and only cease 
from his Church relations when he ceases from life. 
To dash out of the Church is a foolish expedient ; it 
has been the ruin of many a well begun work. 

5. It is not a little ridiculous to suppose that a calm, 
fraternal discussion must end in the convulsive throes 
of ecclesiastical dissolution. Freedom of speech is 
essential to liberty in Church and State. Corruption 
and tyranny invoke silence, but truth and righteous- 
ness invite utterance. The latter have nothing to 
conceal — nothing that they do not wish to have cir- 
culated to the remotest extent. But tyranny claims 
to rule without a reason ; it maddens at the thought 
of inquiry, and exacts a blind and brutal submission. 
The idea that this free expression, so harmless and so 
necessary to religion, is dangerous, is an unmatched 
absurdity. It is to mistake the best friend of reli- 
gion for its greatest enemy. The blood in our veins 
is not more important to the health of the body, than 
free speech in our mouths is to the health of the 
Church. 

Let no one, therefore, agonize over the dangers of 
discussion. It is to borrow trouble from what should 
be our greatest consolation. Where is liberty in the 
State, or purity in the Church, at this moment ? Is it 
in Italy or Russia, where freedom of speech is un- 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 149 

known? oris it in England and the United States, 
where men write and speak as they please? If we 
wish for the midnight of error and corruption, then 
let ns declaim against investigation. 

We shall n<:>\v show more directly that the extirpa- 
tion of slavery is not only safe, but every way con- 
ducive to the peace and unity of the Church. 

1. Slavery is sin — so conceded to be, even by the 
most of those who plead for its continuance in the 
Church — and sin is the cause of all disturbances and 
divisions in the Church. If, therefore, we can remove 
the cause, the effect will cease. Unity and peace are 
ever in proportion to holiness. To put away sin is to 
produce union, not to d • tr< »y it. Hence, in assuming 
that the extirpation of slavery will occasion secession, 
we also assume that slavery is a pure institution. 
But, in spite of this unavoidable inference, we are 
met with the objection that the tares and the wheat 
must grow together, lest, in pulling up one, we pull 
up the other also. But this construction of the para- 
ble of the tares and the wheat, is by no means tenable. 
If good here, it is good everywhere, and the conse- 
quence will be that no sinner, however great his 
crimes, can be expelled from the Church. Drunk- 
ards and adulterers, murderers and blasphemers, must 
be retained as well as slave-holders. Such an inter- 
pretation arrays the Bible against itself, and makes 
the existing usage of all Churches — for all Churches 
exclude murderers and blasphemers — unjustifiable 
oppression. Moreover, the passage cannot be so 



150 SI AVERT AND THE CHURCH. 

construed without palpably contradicting the ex- 
position giv r en by Christ in the subsequent verses of 
the chapter. " He that soweth the good seed is the 
Son of man ; the field is the world ; the good seed 
are the children of the kingdom ; but the tares are 
the children of the wicked one ; the enemy that sow- 
ed them is the devil ; the harvest is the end of the 
world, and the reapers are the angels." (Matt, xiii, 38.) 
It is plain enough that the caution was not against 
excluding flagrant sinners, or "the children of the 
wicked one" from the Church, but against extermi- 
nating them from the world. The field is the whole 
world, not simply the Church. Whitby's note on 
this parable is remarkably just : 

" Some collect that even the tares must he members of the 
Church of Christ, as well as the good seed, which, if it only 
signify they by profession may be so, is in itself true ; but if 
it be designed to prove that they are true members of that 
body, of which Jesus Christ is the head, that cannot follow 
from these words: for 1, our Savior saith expressly, 'the 
field is' not the Church, but ' the world.' 2. The seed sown in 
the field by Christ is good seed, ' the children of the kingdom,' 
(yer. 38,) ' the just', (yer. 43 ;) they, therefore, only can 
belong to him, because they only are sown by him ; the tares 
were sown in it by the envious man, that is the devil, {yer. 28,) 
the enemy of Christ and the Church ; they are sown while the 
overseers of the Church were asleep, and are expressly called 
' the children of the devil.' And is it reasonable to conceive 
that the devil, the great enemy of the Church and of its head, 
should beget members to his Church, since ' there is no com- 
munion betwixt Christ and Belial,' or that the devil's children 
should be members of Christ's body ? Vain hence is the col- 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 151 

lection [inference] of the Erastians, that the wicked, and those 
that cause offences, are not by excommunication to be excluded 
from the communion of the Church, seeing the field in which 
the tares spring up is not the Church, but the world." 

2. Slave-holders may complain, and doubtless will, 
of any effort to separate them or tlieir practices from 
the Church, but as they are not of the Church in any 
proper sense, it will not disturb the peace of Chris- 
tians ; and if all slave-holders secede, instead of refor- 
ming, they will go out of the Church only because 
they are not of it — there will be no loss. The exclu- 
sion of such can have no other than a salutary effect. 
Unless it can be shown that corruption is necessary 
to purity — that a diseased limb promotes the health 
of the rest of the body — that contagion is prevented 
by pestilence — we can see no reason why the extir- 
pation of the evil of slavery should not greatly pro- 
mote the welfare of the Church. Something in point 
of numbers would perhaps be lost, but that loss 
would be an unspeakable gain. "While it subtracted 
nothing from the life of the Church, it would remove 
a dead weight — a useless, putrescent incumbrance — 
as dangerous as it is unsightly and loathsome. 

3. Slavery impairs the discipline of the Church, and 
thus paves the road to ruin. We have seen that no 
faithful, impartial application of Church discipline is 
possible where slavery obtains. Neither master nor 
-lave can be required to do what God has enjoined 
upon every Christian. In this case a gradual deterio- 
ration . must supervene. Where the morals of the 
Church are left to chance, or to an inefficient super- 



152 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

vision, the worst corruptions cannot be long delayed. 
The master is allowed to do what is wrong, but this 
is not all ; for even those crimes which are prohibited, 
escape censure, because slaves are not permitted to be 
witnesses. This restriction of testimony is enough to 
sap the foundation of any Church. But the slave is 
almost wholly beyond the reach of Church regula- 
tions. ]N"o relief can be brought to him from this 
source. Church member though he be, education, 
marriage, parental authority, self-government, and 
freedom are as far from him as if no Church existed 
on earth. Xow these imbruted beings, so far as they 
have a nominal or real connection with religion, must 
certainly be every way improved by emancipation. 
As they are at present, the Church has little to do 
with them ; the rending of their chains might bring 
them up to Christian privileges, but it could not pos- 
sibly deprive them of such privileges, for they never 
had them, and never can have them as slaves. The 
Church occupies a feeble, trembling existence — if it 
exists at all — in connection with slavery, and the 
whole effect of abolishing slavery would be beneficial 
in the highest decree. 

4. Slavery impairs the morals of the Church, and 
therefore puts it in continual jeopardy. A low state of 
religion is necessarily fruitful of discord and strife. It 
is the pure who dwell together in unity. The history 
of Church divisions would show that they have inva- 
riably proceeded from a lack of moral principle. But 
nothing could more effectually blunt all perception 
of right and wrong than an institution which at one 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 153 

sweep strikes clown to the dust innocent men, together 
with their wives and children. This enormous, un- 
provoked offence, if allowed to pass without censure, 
opens the way to fathomless corruption. It is the fit- 
ting precursor of any subsequent villanies that the 
most shameless depravity can suggest. Where the 
moral sense of the Church must be kept so obtuse as 
to acquiesce in the " sum of all villanies," other and 
lesser evils will of course follow in due time. The 
canker of unrighteousness will be constantly spread- 
ing, until the whole system sickens and dies. With 
moral perceptions deadened sufficiently to endure 
such arrant wickedness, no community can long sus- 
tain more than the form of religion. Hence, to abol- 
ish slavery is an indispensable condition of religious 
prosperity. 

5. Slavery impedes the progress of the Church. 
The religious culture of slaves must be exceedingly 
limited, and that of their masters not less so. The 
latter, it is true, may be taught to read, and may, with- 
out mockery, be instructed in the duties of conjugal, 
parental, and filial relations, but who shall teach them 
to let the oppressed go free ? Who shall teach them 
to do to others as they would that others should do 
unto them, and yet not subvert slavery ? This neces- 
sity of inculcating all holiness, and still leaving un- 
touched one of the grossest crimes ever committed by 
man against his fellow man, obliges the Church to in- 
vent apologies for slave-holding, and to enter upon a 
course of extenuation where reproof and conviction 

were needed. In such a community, reform can pro 
7* 



154: SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

ceed only to a certain extent ; if the axe is laid at the 
root of the tree, the system of slavery perishes at once. 
Here, then, is a source of perpetual irritation and de- 
feat. Every effort to extend the work of reformation 
recoils upon itself, or else attacks the vitality of slave- 
ry. Can the Church prosper when its onward march 
is thus interrupted — when it marshals its forces for 
the onset, and is compelled to disband them without 
striking a blow ? 

6. But the grand reason is yet to be named. Re- 
ligion and slavery are utterly and eternally hostile to 
each other. They cannot be reconciled, and all at- 
tempts to reconcile them are worse than useless. Vir- 
tue and vice have no affinity. Consequently, so long 
as slavery is in the Church in any shape or degree, it 
must be the occasion of an exterminating warfare. 
Good men must hate sin, and, hating it, must always 
aim at excluding it from the Church and the world. 
As well might we hope to make fire and water coa- 
lesce — as well blend light with darkness, or the sum- 
mer's heat with the winter's cold. What one gains, 
the other loses ; just as slavery is spared, the Church 
is depreciated. It is this antagonism that makes the 
abolition of slavery so essential to the peace and unity 
of the Church. The pure are so constituted that they 
cannot and will not fellowship sin ; and while sin is 
tolerated in the Church, there must inevitably be con- 
tention, if not disruption. A burning, incorruptible 
holiness will loathe and abominate such filthiness of 
flesh and spirit as is engendered by the slave code ; 
nor can prudential considerations, whether of civil or 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 155 

ecclesiastical origin, long hold the rampant hatred in 
check. Men may tk cry peace, but there is no peace." 
There never can be peace between sin and holiness. 
In vain are all expedients to unite what God lias put 
asunder forever. It is this unavoidable collision of 
hostile elements that renders every effort to gloss' 
slavery and incorporate it with the Church so perfect- 
ly futile. The effort cannot be successful ; but if it 
could, the result would be interminable strife — it 
would be to fasten upon the Church chaotic ruin and 
unmatched anarchy to the latest hour of time. Chained 
to the dead body of slavery, the living Church could 
only drag out a brief and sickly existence. To pro- 
long such a connection, whatever may be the motives, 
is moral death. The Church must die, or cast off 
slavery. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIA! TO THE EVAN- 
GELIZATION OF THE WORLD. 

It has often been said, that to exclude slave-holders 
from the Church would hedge up the way of mission- 
aries, and prevent the progress of the gospel among 
slave-holding nations. But the objection is unfor- 
tunate — it claims too much. We might with ex- 
actly the same propriety say, that all other legalized 



150 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

iniquities shall be tolerated because an attack upon 
them would embarrass the missionary. In many coun- 
tries idolatry and polygamy are upheld by law as firmly 
as slavery. And if we are to excuse the practice of 
oue of these crimes on account of the prejudice or 
hostility which might arise from an eifort to exclude 
it from the Church, why not the other ? Why not 
any and all other crimes whatever? The right to 
make an exception in favor of slavery, for the sake 
of expediting the conversion of the slave-holder, or 
securing protection to the ministry, must be broad 
enough to answer in every similar instance of con- 
flict betwixt the law of God and the law of the land. 
And, yielding fully to this principle of compromise, 
we should only have, on a large scale, what now oc- 
curs in lesser degree, wherever slavery is tolerated 
in the Church — a religion without holiness — gospel 
progress without gospel morals ! On this plan, the 
Church might extend itself without disturbing sin ; 
the world might be converted, and yet be as wicked 
as it now is. Such progress is a farce, and can never 
be countenanced by any who do not wish to burlesque 
Christianity. 

The true state of the case is this : the gospel being 
a system of holiness, cannot be allied to sin, without 
destroying its own identity — it can only endorse 
corruption by becoming itself corrupt. Here, then, 
in the outset, arises a fatal embarrassment to all evan- 
gelical efforts. The very instrumentality that should 
convert the world, is rendered powerless. But fur- 
ther : not only is the gospel powerless for good, and 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 157 

wholly incompetent to bless the world, but i\ dually 
becomes one of its greatest curses. It mis! ids and 
debases, by sanctioning and perpetuating vi<?es which 
it was designed to remove. It takes away the advan- 
tages of heathen ignorance, but imparts none of the 
blessings of Christian knowledge. Thus the master 
revels in his ill-gotten gain, traffics in the souls and 
bodies of men, grinds to the dust those who have the 
same title to freedom as himself, and quotes Scripture 
to justify the abomination. Thus, too, the slave's 
natural aspirations for liberty, and all the innumera- 
ble advantages of legalized social life are blighted 
by a similar misapplication of the sacred writings. 
The Scriptures are, in fact, made to serve the purpose 
of chains and manacles, and the Church is converted 
into a slave pen. Divine authority is given to human 
crimes, and the gospel, instead of reforming men, only 
aids them in the perpetuation of crime. Such is the 
inevitable effect of blinking slavery in order to con- 
ciliate slave-holders, and gain access for Christianity 
among them. 

The work of conversion is, and must be, an indis- 
criminate war against sin. It is not this or that evil 
alone that the Scriptures condemn, and from which 
men are to abstain, but all sin — sin of every kind 
and degree. Nor is there any select number of vir- 
tues that the Scriptures approve, but all virtue. The 
injunction is, "cease to do evil ; learn to do well." 
ik Be ye holy." it is, therefore, impossible to preach 
the gospel truly and faithfully, without assailing the 
high-handed crime of slavery. It must be a— idled 



158 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

in principle if not in name. And we believe there 
are few of the advocates for Church slavery, who do 
not admit that the principles of the gospel are opposed 
to the institution, and must, in time, subvert it wholly. 
They, however, strangely contend that the exclusion 
of slavery now is injudicious and impracticable. 
But they should know that lenity here is no more 
allowable than elsewhere. We can just as well bring 
people into the Church tainted with idolatry as with 
slavery. If the standard of religion may be lowered 
in one instance, it may in another, and so on till we 
have graduated the morals of the Church to the taste 
of the most depraved heathen nations. If the sin of 
slavery is ever to be put away, it is to be put away now. 
If the principles of religion condemn it at all, they con- 
demn it now ; and by condescending to retain it, we 
virtually say it is not safe to build the Church on its 
own principles. They must be held in abeyance as a 
matter of expediency, to facilitate the spread of reli- 
gion. Such Jesuitical religion — such concealment 
of fundamental truths — such conniving at sin, is 
neither honest in itself, nor promotive of the king- 
dom of Christ in the earth. 

If merely attacking the principle of slavery is 
enough, then it follows that merely attacking the 
principle of other vices is enough — ■ specification 
and application are all unnecessary. Chastity, tem- 
perance, honesty, and faith may be taught successfully, 
without exciting the prejudices or correcting the prac- 
tices of those who neglect these things ; and if need 
be, the door of the Church can be opened to such, as 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 159 

to insist upon their reformation might lead to perse- 
cution, and hinder the spread of the gospel ! T! 
precisely parallel with the course adopted by such as 
found slave-holding Churches. To avoid persecution, 

and to conciliate those whom they were sent to con- 
vert, they have received them into the Church, and 
sanctioned their errors. Should we admit to the 
bosom of the Church, on profession of faith, drunk- 
ards, adulterers, thieves and liars, with the full under- 
standing that they were to renounce none of these 
sinful practices, our folly would not be greater, nor 
our efforts to evangelize the world more wretchedly 
disastrous than the above. It surely is no wonder 
that men capable of feeling the force of an argument, 
when pressed by such truths, are driven to deny that 
slavery is an intrinsic evil. They assert that it is 
neither good nor evil — neither right nor wrong in 
itself, but only made so by circumstances. This is, to 
all intents and purposes, a full endorsement of slave- 
ry ; no slave-holder, whether professing religion or 
not, could, with decency, chum more. This dexterous 
evasion of responsibility ends at last, as might have 
been foreseen, not in the reformation of the slave-hol- 
der, but in the adoption of his vices by those who 
were commissioned to reclaim him. Such will ever 
be the result. As often as the Church sends out her 
forces to subdue the world to Christ, and makes this 
shameful compromise for the sake <>{' expediting the 
conquest, her forces will recoil — will be beaten — will 
be taken captive, and arrayed against her. Tin 
of Achan was not more fatal to Israel at the walls of 



160 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

Jericho, than the sin of slavery is to Christians in their 
assault upon the world, the flesh, and the devil. 

There is nothing in this sin, more than in other sins, 
to make it exceptional. Men are as ready to relin- 
quish slavery as they are intemperance and debauch- 
ery ; they will no more despise or decapitate the 
minister of Christ who condemns them for this, than 
if he condemned them fdr other wrongs. But it is 
supposed that the civil law makes a wide difference, 
inasmuch as to keep slaves, special stringency is requi- 
site, and he who declaims against the institution is a 
disturber of the peace, if not an insurrectionist. All 
this is very plausible, and may possibly happen in a 
given case ; but it requires no great sagacity to per- 
ceive that men hold slaves as they do other wicked 
things. They are, therefore, approachable on the 
subject, and may be reasoned with, if the proper steps 
are taken. They are not always armed cap a pie, and 
ready for an encounter ; the heart, even of the most 
hardened criminal, has its occasional relentings, and 
there are times and ways in which it is quite safe to 
counsel or reprove him. At least, we find no diffi- 
culty in doing this in reference to most men, and 
there is no good reason to believe that slavery breeds 
such special malignity as to render all its victims 
callous to reproof. Should it appear, however, that 
martyrdom is the only condition on which the gospel 
can be propagated among slave-holders, the Church 
will not decline the task on these terms. It will then 
be quite as easy as it was in apostolic times, when not 
only slavery but idolatry was upheld by the sword. 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY ESSENTIAL. 1G1 

The first ministers went forth everywhere, and no- 
where had the protection of law* — nowhere spared 
the dominant, legalized idolatry. It Las been well 
said that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
Church." We are not to judge of the success of 
preaching solely by the favor accorded to it in the 
first instance. When a few have shed their blood in 
defence of the truth, perhaps the cause has gained 
more in depth and permanence than it could if they 
had spent their whole lives without opposition ; cer- 
tainly more than if they had spent them in softening 
the message of the Lord so as to make it agreeable to 
the unrenewed heart. 

By extirpating slavery in the outset, the Church 
will stand on the only basis she can ever hope to 
occupy with success. She will then he seen in her 
true light, and cast her entire influence against all 
sin, making no deceptive concessions, playing no 
double game, and 'ng herself to no corruption. 

Teaching men not only to amend their lives in some 
grosser faults, but to "perfect holiness" in the fear of 
the Lord, she will have the abiding presence of her 
invincible Head, and go forth to triumph over sla- 
very as she now does over other crime-. Until then 
her strength will not return, and she will grind in the 
house of her enen 



1G2 SLAVERY AND TIIE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY INEVITABLE. 

Were the Church, disposed to compromise and 
retain slavery for a time, on the ground. of expediency, 
still she has no power to do it. Every step of pro- 
gress is death to slavery. The whole evangelical 
process, from beginning to end, subverts sin and 
establishes righteousness. Take, for instance, the first 
great truth of all religion, and especially of revealed 
religion, namely, the existence of God. In order to 
convert the slave or his master, this truth must be 
set forth as it is — that is to say, the true character 
and attributes of God must be developed to the mind 
of those whom we seek to convert. But here at once 
the master sees that human authority is not the high- 
est, and therefore cannot be the ultimate standard of 
right and wrong. He sees that there may be an 
appeal to a higher power, and that he himself is 
answerable to this power. Above all, he sees that his 
slave has, equally with himself, the right of appeal to 
this higher authority. Knowing this truth, it must 
thenceforth be utterly impossible for him to claim 
ultimate or supreme authority over his slave. He 
will, moreover, see that the existence of such a being 
as God, implies rights infinitely greater than any 
finite being can possess ; that his slave is the creature 
of God, and can never belong to a fellow creature in 



EXCLUSION OE SLAVERY INEVITABLE. 1G3 

any proper sense. The civil law may affirm one way 
or another, may call the slave a man or a chattel, 
make him the property of one or another, bnt he sees 
that God alone is, in fact, the real proprietor. Hence 
he can no more "lord it over God's heritage." Take, 
again, the doctrine of immortality. Both master and 
slave find that they are to live forever, ami this truth 
not only relaxes their gra>p upon the present life, so 
that neither can wish to do wrong by coveting or 
claiming what is not his own, bnt both have their 
thoughts turned to the supreme object — Heaven. 
Both are necessarily intent upon securing at once a 
full preparation for their future and eternal inheri- 
tance. This state of mind precludes slavery, because 
slavery precludes culture. The being who is to live 
forever, and whose eternal destiny depends upon an 
instant preparation for death, cannot be made the 
subject of that systematic depression peculiar to sla- 
very. The master will be aware that the slave should 
have all possible facilities for moral and mental im- 
provement — that the slave needs these helps quite ! 
much as other men, having to prepare for the same 
rigorous Judgment, and the same holy Heaven. It 
will not be in his heart to cramp and restrict one on 
whom snch responsibilities are devolved. lie will 
aid the slave all in his power, and accord t<> him the 
utmost liberty that one human being can give to 
another. The preciousness of the soul will infinitely 
outweigh all temporal considerations, and virtually 
extinguish all power in the master t<> task the >lave 
in any way, except as one Christian brother may task 



164 SLAVEEY AND THE CHUKOT. 

another. There could be no wasting of the slave's 
life and opportunities — no drudgery — no oppression, 
under the influence of such a truth. But there is yet 
another view of the case. The slave and his master 
are to live together forever — they are co-heirs of im- 
mortality. If the master injures the slave — bruti- 
fies, degrades, crushes him — the wrong will upbraid 
him forever — it will stare him in the face through 
eternal ages. He will spend his eternity in company 
with his now slave, where " the servant is free from 
his master." Can any man, with the impression that 
his slave is to be elevated at death to equal privileges 
with himself — to eternal glory — keep him degraded 
here ? Can he treat the slave as a chattel, or with- 
hold from him any privilege that men esteem valua- 
ble ? Can such a man hold a slave ? We pronounce 
it impossible. It is not in the nature of things that 
such studied and shameless wrongs as slavery inflicts, 
should be perpetrated by one who looks forward to a 
beatific state, in which the slave is to be associated 
with him forever, and to be an equal sharer with 
himself. 

But, suppose the preacher sets forth the doctrine of 
holiness. He must explain the nature of sin, and es- 
pecially show that it is a violation of the law of God. 
He must, also, explain its fearful penalty, and bring 
both the slave and his master to repentance. JNow, 
if there is anything wrong or sinful in slavery, it 
thenceforth must cease, or the preaching is in vain. 
It is only on the assumption — wholly gratuitous and 
untenable — that slavery is not a moral evil, that its 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY INEVITABLE. L65 

longer continuance is possible. Tlicre is just one way 
of obviating this conclusion, and that is, by supposing 
tliis sin still undiscovered — a sin of ignorance. But 
the objection would be equally valid against adultery, 
robbery or murder. As these crimes must be discov- 
ered before Christianity can make any saving pro- 
gress in the soul, so must the crime of slavery — or 
rather, that accumulation of crimes denominated by 
the term slavery — and when discovered there is the 
same imperative necessity for reformation in the one 
case as in the other. If the preacher neglects his 
duty in the premises, and fails to teach that slavery 
is sin, his progress in the work of evangelism will be 
such as if he had neglected to teach that lying and 
theft were sins against God. lie may have a Church 
in form, but not in fact. 

AVe will now leave the master out of the question 
entirely, and examine yet further the effect of reli- 
gious teaching upon the slave. To make the case the 
stronger, let us suppose that the missionary In '-ins 
his instruction of the slave with these words : "Ser- 
vants, be obedient to them that are your masters ac- 
cording to the flesh." It is not enough barely t'» 
enunciate this passage by itself : the reason for the 
injunction must be assigned, which is, that God wills 
this obedience. The slave, then, must know the com- 
parative claims of this authority, or, in other words, 
that it is higher than the authority of man. He will 
henceforth feel himself to be the subject of a new 
power, and one transcendently greater than he had 
before known. But tar more musl follow. With the 



166 SLAVERY AND THE CHIJECH. 

knowledge of that part of the gospel which we have 
referred to, there must be connected all the essential 
truths of Christianity. The slave will see that obedi- 
ence to his master is not the sum of God's requirements, 
and not by any means an unconditional duty. He 
w T ill learn that he also is a man, and has the duties 
of a man to perform — that a life of holiness is in- 
cumbent upon him as well as other men, and that no 
human authority can oblige him to sin, because God 
has forbidden it. He will see it his duty to be mar- 
ried, to take care of his wife and children,- and to do 
all the duties which Christianity imposes upon men. 
This knowledge the Christian missionary is bound to 
communicate, and the slave is equally bound to heed 
it — for there is no gospel for slaves, as such, no de- 
fective messages, graduated to the limited and con- 
tingent scale of their privileges. The same glad 
tidings which come to other men, come to them, and 
must have the same purifying effect on the bond as 
the free. It would be mockery to make a gospel out 
of a few isolated precepts, as is virtually clone when- 
ever the instruction of slaves is confined to a given 
class of duties, or a particular set of religious truths. 
Such teaching may pass under the name of religion, 
s but it deserves the severest reprobation. It is mur- 
dering the souls of men, under a pretence of saving 
them. Thus mutilated, the gospel becomes a power- 
ful instrument of oppression, and is made to add its 
authority to the vilest enactments of the State. Ta- 
king for granted, then, what cannot be denied — that 
the slave must be taught to obey God rather than 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY INEVITABLE. 167 

man, whenever human and divine requirements come 
into collision, we are utterly at a Loss to know how 
any man can be a slave. It is conceded that he is a 
man — that, as a man, he has important rights, with 
which the slave code interferes — that on these rights 
are founded duties which must not be neglected. This 
being the case, Ave ask, how can the slave be taught 
that he is a man, and that the rights and duties of a 
nam appertain to him, without being thereby inca- 
pacitated to yield those rights or neglect those duties ? . 
Why teach men that they are men, and yet compel 
them to relinquish the attributes of their nature '. or, 
rather, why attempt it \ — for it cannot be done. The 
faithful instruction of the slave is his emancipation 
by the act of God. lie is thenceforth free in Christ, 
and free in the world, to all intents and purposes, save 
the unrighteous exactions of the civil law, which he 
is under the most solemn obligations to abjure and 
t, whereinsoever they conflict with his duty to 
himself or his God. 

It is admitted by many of the warmest advocates 
of religious slave-holding, that slavery and Chrisl 
ity are inimical, and that the former must ultimately 
be subverted by the latter. Tin- admission of the 
truth would be satisfactory, were it not for the par- 
alyzing anachronism which attends it. Christianity 
will abolish shivery not only ultimately, but instant- 
ly. The work is done at once and forever. When 
the slave be - a man, and assumes tfc 'risi- 

bilities of a man — as he must nnderproper r 
teaching — his degradation ends, lie may still be a 



168 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

slave in name, and the civil law may count him pro- 
perty only ; yet he is obliged to regard himself as 
God regards him — a man ; and being a man, he mnst 
act as a man, and not as a brute — the only character 
assigned him by the slave code. We differ from those 
who assert, as above stated, only in reference to the 
time in which the emancipating effect of Christianity 
is felt. They assume that it may be delayed ; but 
we affirm that delay is impossible. The emancipa- 
tion is precisely coeval with the belief of God's word. 
This must be, because that word involves truths re- 
specting the slave that cannot fail to revolutionize 
his conduct. Instead of regarding his owner as su- 
preme, the moment he believes in God this suprem- 
acy is transferred, never to return. He then has a 
Master in Heaven, to whom he is under infinitely 
greater obligations than he can be to man. Like all 
other believers, he may neither live nor die " to him- 
self," nor to any created being, but only " unto the 
Lord." The power of the master to dispose of him 
and to control him, is dependent on the will of God, 
as ajyprehended by the slave. He is constituted judge 
of what is duty. Before him is the straight and nar- 
row way, " which leadeth unto life," and before him, 
also, is martyrdom — if need be — as the inevitable 
consequence of walking in that way. But he may 
not decline the path of holiness, on account of perse- 
cutions — if early death must, in his case, be associa- 
ted with purity, it will only give him a brighter 
crown at last. 

This necessity of obeying God in all things, is not 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY INEVITABLE. 109 

something that arises in particular stages of religious 
experience, or in peculiar circumstances of life; it is, 
on the contrary, the one unvarying condition of all 
religion ; there can be no saving faith where this im- 
plicit obedience is wanting. Professions and exerci- 
ses there may be in any quantity, but not salvation. 
" Xot every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth 
the will of my Father which is in heaven." An in- 
stant obedience is demanded, and all conflicting au- 
thority is crushed as soon as the soul is affianced to 
its God. Over such an one the brutal slave law can- 
not bear sway — it must select other and more pliant 
material for its tyranny. Redeemed souls, who have 
covenanted to renounce the world, the flesh, and the 
devil, will not bow their necks to the God-dishonor- 
ing statutes of men. 

AVe have, then, this single alternative — freedom 
or no gospel — freedom with the gospel, or slavery 
without it. The law of God must extirpate the law 
of man, so far as the latter interferes with the require- 
ments of the former, or the kingdom of heaven can. 
never be established among men, nor the will of God 
be done in earth as it is done in heaven. It is most 
remarkable that any one should ever have hesitated 
to take this position or to make war upon human 
legislation in those particulars wherein it usurps the 
divine prerogatives, and destroys the rights of man. 
Such laws are clearly sinful, and ought to be — in- 
deed, must be — resisted by all who would live un- 
blamably. Human law is to be respected and 



170 SXAVEKY AXD THE CHUECH, 

obeyed when it is right, but in no other case ; to obey 
it when sinful, under the mistaken idea that we 
are thereby obeying God, is a manifest absurdity. 
All commands of this character are conditional. Hu- 
man authority is good until it clashes with a higher, 
and then it is good for nothing. The extirpation of 
this form of vice — ■ that is, legal vice — is as much 
incumbent upon the Christian, as is the extirpation 
of other forms of wickedness. Sinful legislation is to 
be counteracted by the preaching of the Cross, just 
as much when it relates to slavery as when it relates 
to idolatry, or Sabbath-breaking, or swindling. Or, 
in other words, sin is not to find a sanctuary in law. 
If men do wrong in making laws, the Christian is 
bound to overturn, if possible, those laws, and make 
better ones : at all events, he must not obey them. 
The Christian missionary is, therefore, a direct sub- 
verter of the slave law ; he cannot preach without 
attacking it, nor be successful in his mission without 
breaking it down. Religion is a war against sin of 
every kind, and if slavery is sin, there is no alterna- 
tive — it must be extirpated, or religion must cease to 
do its work. We have too long been deluded with 
the idea that Christianity has nothing to do with cor- 
rupt governments, and must make its way by Jesuit- 
ical artifices which conceal the truth or corrupt it by 
the adoption of error. Such a policy may answer for 
the spread of superstition, but it cannot promote evan- 
gelical religion. The apostles did not denounce 
slavery by name, nor is it necessary in all cases, but 
they did what is quite as effectual, they taught justice 



EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY DTEVITABLE. 171 

between man and man — they taught slaves that they 
were men, and should act like men — they enjoined 

all holiness upon both masters and servants — they 
taught all to set their affections on things above, and 
to remember that they had " a Master in Heaven." 
Xow, the teaching of men thus, precluded all n< 
sity of specifying particular sins in every instance. 
If we teach honesty in all things, stealing is just as 
effectually prohibited as it would be by a special pro- 
hibition. If we teach kindness, it is not indispensa- 
ble to add a precept against cruelty and murder. The 
greater includes the less — positive virtue compre- 
hends negative goodness. The apostles did not, in so 
many words, forbid killing a thousand men, or steal- 
ing ten thousand dollars ; but as they forbade the kill- 
ing of any man, and the stealing of any sum, no 
prohibition against these enormities was necessary. 
In condemning the lesser crime, they also condemned 
the greater. The same is true of slavery. They 
taught virtues and duties with which slavery is in- 
compatible — they brought a system of kindness to 
bear upon a system of cruelty, a Bvstem of right upon 
a system of wrong, a system of holiness upon a system 
of sin — they let light in upon darkness, restored the 
slave to God and to manhood, and struck the slave 
law dead. 

AVe can now see the absolute contrariety between 
these two systems, and .the perpetual, inevitable, uni- 
versal war which one must wage against the other. 
Christianity teaches jnstice, mercy. Love, and truth; 
but slavery ignores them all in theory, and discards 



172 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

them all in practice. Hence, every effort to build up 
the former, must be a direct attack upon the latter. 
Slavery must die just in proportion as Christianity 
lives. To teach the virtues of the one, is to discoun- 
tenance the vices of the other. All compromise is 
out of the question, for religion can never be made to 
sanction crime. The systematic oppression — the 
utter contempt of all justice and humanity, by which 
alone slavery is brought into existence or kept in be- 
ing — is rebuked by the entire spirit of the gospel as 
well as by its every precept. How, then, is it possi- 
ble to propagate this religion of purity and benevo- 
lence, without, at the same time, breaking down the 
corrupt and unjust system of slavery ? Not to oppose 
the latter, would be equivalent to suspending all the 
functions of Christianity. We must cease from the 
Bible, or else pervert its meaning altogether, if we 
would spare the slave code. There is not a single 
truth to be uttered, nor a single precept to be en- 
forced by the minister of Christ, which does not 
directly and fatally assault " the peculiar institution." 
It is, therefore, impossible to retain slavery, if we 
would ; the Church has no option in the matter — she 
cannot raise hell to heaven, nor give saintly purity to 
diabolical crime. No : the constitution of the Church 
excludes this foul sin, and will forever exclude it in 
spite of all human authority. 



INFLUENCE OF CIVIL FREEDOM. L73 



CHAPTER VII. 

CIVIL FREEDOM SHOULD BE MADE BUBSERVIENT TO THE 
( APSE OF EMANCIPATION. 

It is unquestionably the duty of the American 
Church, in the prosecution of its high designs, to take 
advantage of our republican form of government. 
Here the people are sovereign, not in theory only, 
but in fact. They make their own laws, and execute 
them when made. Our system of popular elections 
under constitutional law, effectually prevents all he- 
reditary power, and also the accumulation of power 
in the hands of government functionaries. The right 
of the people to control and modify their form of gov- 
ernment, and all the laws originating under it, is fully 
admitted. It is not esteemed disorderly, or contuma- 
cious, or unreasonable, to aim at any improvement in 
civil polity. So far from it, indeed, is the general 
sentiment of the country, and the spirit of our gov- 
ernmental institutions, that he who neglects to study 
the character of the laws, and to aid in all suitable 
ways the work of amendment, is justly considered as 
recreant to duty. It is very evident, that a Church 
enjoyingsuch a form of government becomes, in part, 
responsible for whatever laws are enacted. This re- 
sponsibility is precisely according to the measur< 
influence which the Church is capable 
public opinion and at the pells. Knowing that slave- 



174 



SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 



ry is oppression, and that all oppression is forbidden 
by God in the most pointed manner — it becomes the 
duty of every member of the Church to aid in the re- 
peal of the slave law, and in the restoration of the 
slave to all the rights and immunities of citizenship. 
Even under an absolute monarchy this result would 
inevitably follow the propagation of Christianity, but 
not so speedily, nor with so little inconvenience to 
the Church. Such a government might not heed the 
wishes of Christians, however respectfully expressed ; 
and in that case there would be no redress, save the 
common privilege of piety -that of laboring and 
suffering in conformity with the law of God, in spite 
of all human authority. The foundations of such a 
monarchy would be slowly but surely sapped by the 
progress of religion, and, in the end, the Church 
would triumph over oppression. As fast as men were 
converted, the government would be annihilated in 
all its bad features ; and at last, when the number of 
converts was sufficiently multiplied, Christianity 
would assume control, as it did in the days of Con- 
stantine. Where governments are despotic, long 
years of suffering are requisite to accomplish ameliora- 
tions which can be reached almost at once in a repub- 
lic. And since Providence has favored us, not only 
with a republic, but with such an one as gives to us 
a greater share in the regulation of civil affairs than 
was ever enjoyed by any other people, we are bound 
to make this advantage contribute to the freedom of 
those who are now so strangely enslaved in this land 
of liberty. The laws which enslave them are, in no 



nuiOTJCB ot civil vamxat. IT.', 

bconsid^Ue degree, dependent for ^ch^ 

££^^-^" .o 

f nv as evils the correction of which is alto- 

:,;':;;:;::;,:,,,; ,<> ?<— -5 

i i ^ int wicked legislation, which original 
SJ^VpSahl^ahletc force them ye, 

l Xfact that Christians in the apostle J ,had 
litfle or no political hinnen^an^e not ^ 

consnltedin^eena^^^f^,^ ^^ 

^'^riaX jostles. They con, 
slavery was treated t> : i servants of 

^f , -:; i ;S ..SlU" Tb^iiga. 

men.'' rhej saia tc , appear- 

tiontodono-ong-d^ — *^ » 

ance of evil, w * ** emancipating the 

Fehendedmnch-orethanmerely * ^ 

Blave, as it honnd the mast* as ^ 

aiifeot t F ;: a nU"i-'-^- 

the same fomily, and neirsi t 

G0 d. thnstheaposflesd^notrefrj^ 

political teaching, thongh they 

tions on the subjecting; ^^ * wb ition 

tobeholyisjns -<- - '• ,.„ , 

of mOT der as is the injnnction thons ^ 

It has heen supposed that the *» 

silent onpoliticalsnh|ectsand&at^iU JJ 

of the Chnrch in matter* 



176 SLAVERY AND THE CHUBCH. 

occasion of this silence. But we contend they were 
not Blent By prohibiting all sin, they have as effectu- 
ally condemned the sin of slavery as it was possible 
for words to do. No concession can be made here 
for if the apostles shunned political questions on the 
above ground, there is no good reason why they 
should have confined their caution to slavery. Chris 
turns were just as powerless in reference to other po- 
litical grievances. The law upheld idolatry, and he 
same prudence which dictated silence in reference to 
slavery, should have prevented all mention of idol- 
worship The truth is, slavery became an impossi- 
bility under the gospel dispensation. It could not live 
a moment m the kingdom of God. It was condemned 
by every precept and spurned by every truth in the 
gospel message. Hence, there was no more need of 
particularizing it among things prohibited, than there 
was of particularizing cannibalism. Minuteness of 
specification here would have been out of place As 
teachers of supernatural and immaculate holiness, it 
did not become the apostles to waste words on so 
gross a complication of villanies. After enjoining all 
kindness and brotherly love, it could not be expected 
that they would specifically inhibit the grossest bru- 
talities. We therefore have no difficulty in account 
ng for any absence of formal prohibitions against 
slavery. It is not necessary to find reasons for apos- 
tolic silence, since that silence does not exist. Every 
command was a prohibition in fact, and every prohi- 
bition was as plain as language could make it. 
It should be observed, that our democratic form of 



INFLUENCE OF CIVIL FREEDOM. 1 I ' 

government opens every question of law to publ 
discussion. This is true oven in the slave Stat. 
The constitutions of those States are subject to revision 
whenever the people choose, and nothing more is t 
qnisite to effect any legal reform than simply to chang 
the state of public sentiment. Churchee situated m 
slave-holding States have notion- to do but avail 
themselves of their acknowledged political rights. n 
the exercise of these rights, they can soon restore the 
slave to manhood, and blot out every slave law from 

the statute book. 

As vet, anti-slavery principles have flourished most 
in the'free States, ami for the best of reasons ; though 
some have deemed all agitation of the subject, except 
on slave territory, quite out of place. But it so hap- 
pens that truth must be spoken where it can be spo- 
ken The earliest preachers were especially charged, 
when persecuted in one city, to flee to another. B 
the slave States will not endure to be told of their 
sins, by men living within their own borders, i be- 
comes necessary to teach them from some ^stand- 
point. We do not go into taverns and < .-ulhrn- to 

lecture ou temperance, nor into infidel club ro I to 

preach the gospel. Yet lecturing and preaching are 
SeS, notwithstanding weare unable *£*«""* 

directly the most guilty. A rding to .he objecben 

above stated, Christ, when he came to establish the g 
Ssho-d Reappeared, not in Judea , where there 
w^somelmowledgeofthetrueWutmthedarkes 

regions of paganism. Why did he not go atfiiat 

wSere there was least light 1 Plainly, because there 



173 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

was less prospect of success. For the same reason 
the anti-slavery movement must be confined in its 
incjp.ency, to places where there is some light-where 
the principles of civil liberty are well enough under- 
stood and sufficiently appreciated, to serve as a step- 
ping stone to the new platform. Why did not Wash- 
ington and Jefferson go to England to inculcate their 
republican and revolutionary doctrines ? Doubtless 
they thought it better to make the effort here, where 
revolution and republicanism were more congenial to 
the public mind. They found opposition enough 
even here, and so does the anti-slavery cause in the 
free States. 

It is well known that many slave-holders thirst for 
the blood of those who oppose slavery, and it is only 
justifiable prudence to avoid their rage so long as we 
can, without retardingthe progress of truth. We have 
the highest authority for this careful regard to per- 
sonal safety, while battling with the errors of wicked 
men. « After these things Jesus walked in Galilee ■ 
for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews' 
sought to kill him." 

Although we have no slaves or slave-holders in this 
region, we have great numbers of people who need 
enlightening on the subject, in order to discharge 
their duty. If they remain ignorant of slavery, we 
shall look m *ain for them to aid, by precept or ex- 
ample, when the Church and the Government under- 
take to put down the evil. Ignorance is weakness ; 
not to know the horrors of slavery, is to be feeble in 
opposing it. Again, if slave-holders perceive that 



KO MIWlW. GROrXD. "' 

non-slave-holders arc ignorant and indiffereiH on the 
subject, they wiU constme this indifference into p* 

tive approval, and hold on their way. Finding that 
the practice of slavery does not sink them m the esta- 

mation of mankind, they will be confirmed in the 
vice: whereas, if they see themselves branded with 
infamy and treated as pirates, they will naturally pay 
some respect to the opinions of the world and such 

Z desire to be respectable, will quit the abominable 
bu iness. Another reason for discussing slavery m 
the ee States is, that the Churches and .he Govern- 
Lnt sthingsn'owavc, accord to the institution their 
support. We have no slaves, but we are willing tin 
XL should have them. We give our sane t, on o 
slavery, by not entering our protest against it. 
tuoldin, slaves indirectly. We would quite as soon 
o the wrong, as give countenance to *-^<ut 
Tt is an old maxim, that the partaker is as bad as tlie 
thief The accessory is no better than the P nn«paL 



CHAPTER VIII. 
so nnmx* cbo^-tuk cu«cu M«r ktho* -o,- 

SLAVERY OR ADOPT IT. 

A^KCOurse-pa^ly-c^gand^ 
repudiatmgthesystemefslav^y-hasbee^a 
b y some, and is by them supposed to be that] 



180 SLAVEKY AND THE CHURCH. 

by the apostles. Among the more recent advocates 
of this position, is Dr. Bond, the editor of the Chris- 
tian Advocate and Journal. He claims that the M 
E. Church stands upon this basis. The following is 
his statement : ° 

" We took also the ground that the position of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church was now precisely the same with the 
apostolic Church, in regard to slave-holders ; that the apostles did 
not make emancipation a condition of Ghurch-feUowship 
although slaves abounded in the Roman Empire, where they 
planted the gospel personally. Not a single command to this 
effect can be found in their letters to the Churches, while obedi- 
ence to masters is enjoined upon slaves in the strongest terms 
But did the apostles therefore sanction the system of slavery 
which prevailed in their day? Surely they did not; nor did 
those they gathered into the fold of Christ so understand them." 

This extract contains a remarkable statement, but 
whether tenable or not, will shortly appear. It affirms 
that « the position of the M. E. Church is now pre- 
cisely the same with the apostolic Church, in regard 
to slave-holders." If this be so, then it follows that 
the apostolic Church had a discipline in which this 
question occurred, « What shall be clone for the extir- 
pation of the evil of slavery ? " And the answer to 
this question must have read thus, " We declare that 
we are as much as ever convinced of the great evil 
of slavery; therefore, no slave-holder shall be eligible 
to any official station in our Church hereafter, where 
the laws of the State in which he lives will admit of 
emancipation, and permit the liberated slave to enjoy 
freedom." This, and much more, together with a 



NO MIDDLE GROUND. 



M 



rule forbidding "the buying and selling of men, worn* 
and children, with an intention to enslave them." [fthe 
Doctor cannot admit this, he will please abandon I 
position, that the Methodist Episcopal Church w 
cupies, in reference to slave-holders, precisely thesame 
ground as the apostolic Church. 
' But lie further Bays, "that the apostles did not 
make emancipation a condition of Church-feUowship." 
Neither did they make abstinence from any other 
crimes a condition of Church-feUowahip. Nothing is 
said of murder, perjury, burglary, counterfeiting, and 
are we to understand that because these are nol 
cificallv prohibited, men who commit such thin.- arc 
suitable for Church-membership I These crimes pr< >b- 
ably "abounded in the Human Empire, where they 
planted the gospel personally," yet nothi aid 

about excluding such culprits from the Church : - not 
a single command to this effect can he found m their 
letters to the Churches." Now we contend that eman- 
cipation might be omitted for the same reason that 
operated in the latter case- that is, because the enu- 
meration of so palpable a duty was superfluous. 
Christianity aimed to establish universal holiness, ami 
it was quite sufficient to lay down the rule, and < 
a few cases, as mere illustrations of its application. 
A system which teaches that it iswrongto Bteal ^ 
the smallest sum, surely cannot be considered as teach- 
ing that it is righl to steal a thousand dollars. Nor 
do we need an express ml, on the subject bo oi 
emancipation. ffo express prohibition wasi «ry, 
because the general law of doing g I, and only good 



182 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

to our fellow men, included this as well as all other 
blessings which the master had power to bestow on 
his slaves. 

It appears also that " obedience to masters is en- 
joined upon slaves in the strongest terms." But any 
inference drawn from this in favor of slavery would 
be as absurd as to suppose that an exhortation ad- 
dressed to laborers absolved their employer from all 
obligation to pay them their wages. The slave's duty 
was one thing, and his master's another. Christian- 
ity inculcates fidelity in every relation of life, and 
even kindness towards the wicked ; but this does not 
at all justify the wicked, nor authorize them to con- 
tinue on in their course. Commanding the slave to 
be faithful, is no approbation of slave-holding. If it 
were, then the command to him that, is smitten on one 
cheek to turn the other for the next blow, is an appro- 
val of smiting. 

Again, " did the apostles therefore sanction the sys- 
tem of slavery which prevailed in their day ? Surely 
they did not." We fully agree with him in this con- 
clusion. His mistake lies in assuming that the apos- 
tles did not make emancipation a condition of Church 
fellowship in fact, because they did not do it in 
form. He takes for granted that what is not specifi- 
cally commanded, is not commanded at all. But we 
maintain that no specific injunction was necessary, 
inasmuch as the entire system of Christianity was dia- 
metrically opposed to slavery, and in favor of eman- 
cipation. Yet on this slender and deceitful founda- 
tion — the absence of a formal precept — it is vainly 



NO MTPPLE QEOTJND. 



attempted to build up a system of religions Blai 
holding. As well might we erect thereon a Bystem 
of sanctified piracy, because piracy is qoI specifically 
condemned in the New Testament. 

K the apostles did not "sanction the system of slave- 
ry as it prevailed in their day," they Burely did w 
sanction it in any form, nor at any time. We have 
no rightto infer that they sanctioned some other form 
of slavery, and, above all, have we no right to gel up 
a form of slavery which we think the apostles would 
have sanctioned, and palm this upon the world as a 
scriptural institution. The slavery of those days was, 
in substance, the slavery of all time; and improve 
the institution as we may, it will always cxhil.it, in 
greater or less degree, the same diabolical feature 
The system defies all essential modification — it may 
be destroyed, but cannot be reformed. 

If we strike at the master's supremacy by limiting 
the slave's obedience to such commands as are con- 
formable to the law of God. slavery is at an end— 
for, in that case, 'the slave is constituted the judge of 
his master's commands, the law of God, and his • ■■ 
duty. What he judges to be contrary to right. 1. 
under obligation not to perform. He is in fan fr< 
as free as any man living. Hut if this elemenl 
slaverv is suffered to continue, all freedom is out of 
the question: the master assumes the place of God, 
and the slave is no1 permitted to have a cons 
AW- may suppose that his master is a good mai , 
will exact nothing wrong of him: but this d« 
vary the case, for the simple reason that we have 



184: SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

right to give up our consciences to the keeping of 
even good men. The master cannot answer for his 
slave at the Judgment ; " for every one of us shall 
give account of himself to God." This necessity of 
answering for himself at the bar of God, obliges eve- 
ry man to act an independent part — and the slave as 
much as other men. Good men may err, but if they 
were infallible, they should not be blindly followed. 
Our own faculties were intended to be brought into 
exercise, and should therefore be allowed to choose 
between good and evil. The slave, in order to be 
anything more than a machine, must occupy the po- 
sition of a moral agent. Yet it is utterly impossible 
that he should be a moral agent and still be a slave. 
The slave code divests him of all power to think and 
act for himself, and commits the determination of his 
conduct wholly to his master, whoever and whatever 
he may be. No exception is made, or can be made, 
in favor of any right of conscience ; the fact that the 
slave is a moral being is totally ignored. The same 
is true of the slave, intellectually. There is no 
right of private judgment — mo recognition of intel- 
lectual character. In all these respects the slave is 
on the same level with the horse or the ox. And the 
law is perhaps as favorable as it possibly can be 
under the circumstances ; its aim is to give the 
master " entire control," and this could not be 
done if the slave were recognized as a man, or 
permitted to judge for himself in anything. Hence, 
while we have slavery at all, we must have it with 
every shade of ancient and modern barbarity. Deep- 



NO MIDDLE GEOTTND. 185 

er tinged at times it maybe, through the accumula- 
tion of superfluous wickedness; bul no variations 
can ever change its essential character. It may 

to exist, but cannot cease to be evil while it < 

If we strike at the property aspeel of slavery, we 
find the system equally unimprovable. Thi 
well shown by Mr. Groodell,in his late valuable work 

on the American Slave Code : 

"The slave cannot be considered by the Government as 
tided to its protection while he is not regarded by it as having. 
any rights to be protected. And the Government thai recog- 
nizes and protects slave chattelhood has already, in thai very 
act, denied to the slave the possession of any rights, by deny- 
ing to him the right of self-ownership, which is the foundati 
and parent stock of all other rights, and without which they 
cannot exi-t. 

" Having no right to himselfj to his b tdintel- 

lect. (being all of them the property of hi- "own r,") he has 
no right to his own industry, to its wages, or it- products ; no 
right to property or capability of possessing it, a- a 
shown. Of course he has no H 
by the Government, and none of the rights thai gro^ 

them. 

' : Having no recognized right of making anj 
no contracts with others I forced by th< G 

and no one has any legal pecuniary claims upon him to 
forced. He can neither sue nor be sued. Tin- is no arbitr 
rule, Il is the inevitable resull d. 

"Unable to 
no action at law againsl the violator of hi- bed. II.- 



186 -SLAVERY AND THE CHTJECH. 

marital or parental rights, he has none for the Government to 
protect. 

" Not being accounted a person, but a thing, he can have no 
personal rights to be protected — no rights of reputation or 
character — no right to education — no rights of conscience — 
no rights of personal security — no social rights — no political 
capabilities or rights — not even the right of* petition, as the 
Federal Congress (very consistently with its recognition of le- 
gal human chattelhood) have affirmed. It would be an anom- 
aly to receive the testimony of such an one in a Court of law ! 

" It is futile, it is absurd, it is self-contradictory, it is short- 
sighted and foolish (to say nothing more severe) for any per- 
sons to find fault with any of these things, while they recognize- 
as innocent and valid " the legal relation of master and slave" 
the relation of slave-oivnership, which includes, implies, and 
necessitates it all. Such persons should ask themselves seri- 
ously what they ivoald have 1 ? 

" Would they have the Government stultify itself, and add 
mockery to injustice by pretending to attempt known impos- 
sibilities in the enactment of contradictions'? by making a 
show of civil protection where none is intended, or where they 
have rendered it impossible % What protection can they be- 
stow so long as, by sustaining or even permitting or tolerating 
human chattelhood, or failing to suppress it as a crime, 
they leave not the slave the possession of one single right of 
humanity to be protected % 

" Or, suppose the Government to be honest and successful 
in its attempts to confer upon the slave civil rights, to recog- 
nize and treat him as a member and component element of 
civil society. Suppose it to protect, instead of denying these 
rights — rights of conscience — rights of security — rights of 
reputation — right to education — free speech - — parental rights 
— marital rights — right of testimony — right to sue and be 
sued — right to make contracts — rights of property — right 



NO MIDDLE QBOTOD. 



187 



to his earnings and producta. What would fi< n f I 

right to dave-ownership, "the legal relation of master and 

slave?" Would it n..t vanish and disappear! Assuredly it 
would.'' {Part i. Oh. 1.) 

Again, if we attempt reform in the element 
vitude, nothing can be effected without annihilati 
slavery. Tate Palsy's definition— "an obligation to 
labor for the benefit of the master, without the con- 
tract or consent of the servant"— and before we a 
place the relation on Christian grounds, we musl 
eliminate all that gives vitality to the slave system. 
The servant must have a fair compensation for his 
labors, and be permitted such a choice of labor as * 
compatible with the rights of conscience. He must 
also be allowed the right of " consent and contract far 
enough to secure the proper distribution of Ins tone 
and talents on the several objects for which *tM 
should live. He cannot plod forever ma single 
direction, without reference to his own welfare, and 
eolelv for his master's benefit; becausetod , - would 
be to neglect the duty which every man owes to him- 
self, to mankind, and to God. Now it ia obvious that 
servitude thus denuded of its oppressive or anti- 
Christian traits is no longer slavery— no, it is not 
slavery even according to Paley, who bas cut down 
the meaning of the term much below its real imp 
But if the reform is eanied still farther, and to 
risht of choice is added the rightsofpn , of 

marriage, and of citizenship, the resemblai 

Wishes entirely, and .fie man,tbongh B - rvant, 



188 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

is nevertheless free in everything essential to moral 
character. 

The impossibility of getting up a compromise sys- 
tem — midway between slavery and Christianity — ■ 
is also apparent, from this consideration : Religious 
slave-holding is jnst like all other slave-holding, be- 
cause the law by which alone a slave can be held, is 
precisely the same, whether administered by a Chris- 
tian or a man of the world. 

~No man of common intelligence can dispute that 
piety has sometimes made the slave law a dead letter. 
But this is not slave-holding — it is emancipation in 
fact, if not in form. On the other hand it is but too 
evident that where this effect does not occur, and the 
slave law is not at once practically abrogated by 
Christianity, the slave gains nothing by being in the 
hands of a professedly Christian master. It has never 
yet been reported of slave-holding Church members 
that they use their slaves better than other slave- 
holders do ; nor is there any reason why they should, 
if it is right to keep men slaves. Christians are not 
expected to use their cattle and horses better than 
common men ; the nature of these animals makes no 
special demand upon Christian graces. So is it with 
the slave. If it is right to keep him a slave, it is un- 
questionably right to degrade him — if right to hold 
him as property, it is right to treat him as property. 
"We treat the horse as a horse — that is, as he was 
made to be treated ; in like manner, if the Christian 
may have a slave, that slave can have no claim to be 



NO MIDDLE GROUND. L89 

treated as other human beings are treated. A Blave 

should be treated like a slave, and if is altogether 
unreasonable, if not impossible to bold Blaves, and j 
not bold them — to practice slavery withont the 
spirit of slavery. The law determines what slavery 
shall be — the law makes it what it is. There is not 
one slave law for the Church member and another for 
the worldling — no, both must hold slaves, if they 
hold them at all, by the same law. This law will 
take effect impartially — it will cntoff every right of 
the slave and reduce him to just as low a level for 
the Christian as for the infidel. Wherever it opera: 
one uniform and inevitable result must follow — the 
man must cease to be a man, and take rank as 
property, or as a brute. Xo Christian sympathy can 
prevent it, no human sagacity elude it. And as the 
law unmakes the man who ever may be his owner, 
it leaves him to the full tide of desolation which sla- 
very pours over the soul. The Christian's property 
has the same disabilities and liabilities a- other an 
property; the Christian's brute is just as mnch a 
brute as he would be in other hands. In short, I 
law being the same, the legal and practical evils -1' 
slavery are in no wise lessened when the slav< 
owned by a Christian. It is idle to think that I 
tian principle can execute Mich a law — can tr 
men as slaves — and yet not abuse them. 

"Slaves as a class cannot be treated kindly. We might as 
well sa\ a person was run over bj a wagon, and had both 
crushed mildly. The wheels of slavery cannot crush In.: 



190 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

hearts with mild force. It is the force of hell — it burns while 
it strikes." (iV. T. Tribune, May 18, 1853.) 

This is the exact truth. No matter who may exe- 
cute the infernal law — its diabolical effects are ever 
the same. An angel could not make slaves of men 
without doing violence to the nature which God has 
given them. 

It has been proposed to modify slavery by restric- 
ting its motives. The advocates of this plan think to 
give slavery a moral character, by excluding from the 
practice everything mercenary. They propose to 
treat all who hold slaves for gain, as sinners ; while 
those who hold them for any or all other reasons, are 
to be esteemed as innocent. But it is rather late in 
the day to enact that slaves shall not be held for gain, 
wdien even slave-holders themselves acknowledge the 
institution to be an impoverishing affair. The whole 
south is a monument of desolation produced by slave- 
holding, and with this sad example staring us in the 
face, common sense is quite sufficient, without the aid 
of Church-discipline, to keep us from holding slaves 
for gain. Wicked men see that the curse of God is 
on all slave-holders — the very soil on which they live 
is scathed and blighted, till it bears most unequivocal 
marks of divine indignation. There is no gain in slave- 
ry, and this fact is so well known that the Church need 
not make any prohibitory rule in that direction. The 
sum of the matter is this ; those who make the above 
proposition, object to slavery only on one ground — ■ 
that of gain: whereas it is objectionable on every 
ground. They leave the Church open to slavery for 



NO MEDDLE GROUND. L91 

all reasons save <»ne, and thai one, it happens by the 
providence of God, no Blave-holdef of common 
would ever think of avowing. 

But the effort to distinguish between the two kinds 
of slave-holders will always be abortive, and a ml.' 
excluding only those who hold slaves for gain, will 
never meet tlie wants of the Church. It will be im- 
possible to apply it justly, and uiconvenienl to ap] 
it at all. Slavery allowed in the Church under some 
circumstances, will remain in the Church under all 
circumstances. So it hasbeen,and bo it ever will b 
We do not believe that the attempt to distinguish I 
tween those who hold slaves foT gain, and those who 
hold them not for gain, can ever be successful. But 
if it could, it would not improve the character of 
slavery. There is a sufficiency of other m ao 

better than that of gain— as for instance, Laziness, 
licentiousness, pride and power — and if the practice 
when based upon th still tolerated, ir< characi 

will remain unchanged. The truth, however, is, that 
no excellency of motives— no peculiarity of circum- 
stances caa -justify the act. Hence we oppose all 
slave-holding. We make i distinction m I 

se ,andbu1 ,thatb l real and ap- 

parent— slave-holding in fact, and slave-holding in 
form only. There may be Dominal or formal Ch 
tians who are not real Christians and will not 
aved; bo also there may be nominal or formal Bla 
holders who are not real slave-holders, and, thi 
will not be lost A- to any distinction in the char- 
acter of slave-holders, other than 1 ■ ewne, 



192 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

If the man really holds a slave, we count him a sin- 
ner ; but if he only appears to hold a slave, and does 
not hold one in fact, we say he may be a Christian. 
"We place slavery in the category of crimes, and can 
as little approve of slave-holding when not practiced 
for gain, as we could of piracy when not practiced for 
gain. 

Since the foregoing was written, a circumstance has 
occurred which bears with some weight upon a re- 
mark or two, and may be thought to enhance the im- 
portance of the distinction between holding slaves for 
gain, and not for gain. Our observation that " slave- 
holders themselves acknowledge the institution to be 
an impoverishing affair," was based partly on per- 
sonal knowledge, and partly on the following from 
Dr. Bond, who is both a native and a resident of a 
slave State, and whose extensive opportunities have 
enabled him to form an opinion every way entitled to 
respect. 

" We have already said that we have never known a Meth- 
odist — and we will now add any other Christian — who avow- 
ed, or would acknowledge, that he held slaves for gain, or 
pecuniary profit — no, not even in the most southern States of 1 
the Union. We have spoken with none on the subject who 
did not profess to lament the existence of slavery as a great', 
evil, which they were compelled to endure ; and for the most 
part they all admit that the evil is not compensated by pecuni- 
ary advantages — that hired labor would be more profitable, if 
slave labor did not exclude the free ; a truth which is abun- 
dantly proved by the exhaustion, nay, the absolute denudation 
of a great portion of the land in the slave-holding States." 



NO MIDDLE GROUND. 103 

But it seems that the progress of things has devel- 
oped a man, who, in the light of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, is willing to stand up and declare that in his 
Church slaves are held for gain. At the General 
Assembly of the (ISTew School) Presbyterian Church, 
which convened during the last month at Buffalo, one 
of the members distinctly avowed the principle which 
we had supposed the retributions of Providence, and 
respect for the opinions of mankind — if not for the 
gospel — would forbid any sane man to assume. The 
N. y. Tribune thus reports the gentleman : 

" Rev. Mr. McLane, of Mississippi, marched up to the mark 
and ' faced the music' without winking. Such a committee aa 
this which the report contemplates we will not receive. But 
if you ask how many if our Church members are slave-hol- 
ders, I answer, all who are able to be. If you ask how many 
slaves they own, I answer, just as many as their means will 
permit." 

A friend of ours who was on the spot and heard for 
himself, gives the language in still stronger terms : 

"Mr. McLane, a Presbyterian minister from MiflflWBippi, 
with Southern frankness said : ' We disavow the action of tlio 
Detroit Assembly. We have men in our Churches who buy 
slaves, and work them, because they can make MOBl money 

BY IT THAN IN ANY OTHER WAY. And the VlOre of Such RMfl Wd 

have the better. All who can, own slaves; and those who 
cannot, want to." 

He further adds : 



194 SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH. 

" No Southern man objected to this, at the time, as a wrong 
statement of the case. But two days after, when McLane had 
gone home, and when they saw what use was being made of 
this frank avowal, two men, one from Missouri, and one from 
Tennessee, said it was not true in their sections. There, the 
brethren held slaves not for gain, but as an act of benevolence !" 

Now, to our mind, there is nothing especially hor- 
rible in this acknowledgment, inasmuch as gain is a 
lawful motive when connected with a lawful business. 
Slavery is, in every sense secular; slave-breeding, 
slave-trading, and slave-working, constitute a regular 
branch of business from which it is impossible to ex- 
clude the desire of gain, though we were of opinion 
that the judgments of God had so blasted the coun- 
try, and the prospects of those who pursue it, that no 
one could rationally hope to make it profitable. "We 
thought that slavery had become as many other pur- 
suits in which men continue because they have made 
large investments, and find it difficult to effect a 
change, though they are conscious the business is a 
losing one. It appeared to us that the condition of 
the Southern States, as contrasted with the Northern 
States, was enough to make it quite obvious, even to 
slave-holders, that slavery could only impoverish a 
nation. But we accept the testimony of Mr. McLane, 
and correct our statement accordingly. Be it, then, 
that many, or all the members of Southern Churches 
hold slaves for gain, rather than for benevolence — ■ 
they have not fallen in our estimation. To be sure, 
they avow a less exalted motive, but still an honora- 



NO MIDDLE GROUND. 



195 



ble one ; and they might pass as Christians, were 
slavery under any circumstances compatible wtth re- 
ligion. Indeed, there are reasons why we might even 
prefer that gain should be set forth as the reason for 
slave-holding. It is more creditable to slave-holders 
themselves — it shows that they do not affect virtues 
which all the world knows they do not possess. It is 
better that practice and profession should correspond ; 
bnt they cannot where the latter is benevolence, and 
the former a congeries of malevolence. Yet, some 
men, more shameless than others, have the effrontery 
to say in the light of Heaven, that slavery is a mercy I 
But if slave-holding is an act of mercy, we should 
like to know what is an act of cruelty. What a com- 
ment is this argument on society in slave-holding 
States ! Men must be reduced to a level with brutes 
as the only means of escaping from a worse fate ! 
Kay call it not an escape, for their can be no worse 
fate Slavery is worse than death. So will every 
freeman decide in an instant. Why, then, talk of 
holding men in chattelhood, in order « to protect them 
from greater evils 2" We deny the >ce of 

greater evils of a social character, and challenge any 
man to show that slavery is not "the bum oi ail vil- 
lains " Those who hold slaves to save them f* - 
worse condition, should know that a worse c« ■ndmnii, 
short of the bottomless pit, is not possible. 
worthless, nonsensical plea has too era- 

ted When a man's rights arc all g 
himself and posterity doomed to perpetual - 
let him not be insulted, and let not the comma 



196 SLAVERY AND THE CHTTRCH. 

of mankind be outraged "by the declaration that all 
this has been done to save him from a worse fate — 
been done in kindness, and with a true intention to 
fulfil the law of love. Let the crime stand as a crime, 
and add not hypocrisy to robbery. Say, if possible, 
that it was done for gain, and thus avoid pouring 
contempt upon the doctrines of Him who has taught 
us by example as well as precept, that " we ought 
to lay down our lives for the brethren." 

Upon the whole, we are more than ever convinced 
that no discrimination of motives can avail anything 
towards improving the character of slavery, or reliev- 
ing the Church in any degree from this dreadful men- 
bus. Sinful it is, and sinful it will remain, in spite of the 
most accommodating casuistry. It must be prohib- 
ited entirely, or nothing is done. It is prohibition 
that we want — not a sublimation of motives. The 
Church must put away the evil, instead of attempt- 
ing merely to regulate it. It is not regulation that 
slavery calls for, but extirpation. The monstrous in- 
iquity is just as well without regulation as with it. 
Yillany is no better for being systematic. We must 
have the whole or nothing — the institution admits 
of no amendment, nor does it need any. Slavery is 
theft, and when the Church opens its door to thieves, 
she will of course not be particular whether they 
have stolen little or much. 



CONCLUSION. 



197 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONCLUSION. 



vv"e must now bring this work to a close, but not 
without a word in vindication of the objects which 
are ever kept in view by those who truly appreciate 
this great branch of Christian enterprise. 

There are those who — mistaking the genius of 
Christianity— complain bitterly of the whole anti- 
slavery movement. They regard it as unauthorized 
intermeddling, or at best as a mere refinement in 
morals, alike impracticable in itself and mischievous 
in its effects. Hence they have no patience with the 
advocates of emancipation. 

If all men of this stamp would bring the question 
home to themselves, they would be able to judge with 
more wisdom. Were they chattels personal — were 
they, together with their wives and children, down 
to the latest generation, doomed to the and u >n 1 ►lock — 
to the rice swamps — to the slave driver's lash— to 
brutal ignorance — to concubinage — to poverty— 
to bondage and shame - would they think onr feeble 
efforts extreme \ Impossible ! It is only 1 .ecanse all 
this burden rests upon other shoulders, that they 
so easily bear it. Not an honr — not a moment 
would they groan under such nnrighteons oppression. 
They would sav with the noble Patrick Henry, « Give 
me liberty, or give me death." But they arc quite 



198 SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 

j 

willing to bind this intolerable load upon others, and 
make them bear it forever, although they would not 
themselves touch it with one of their ringers. Were 
they suffering in this manner, discussion would be to 
their ears a music sweeter than the ^Eolian harp. 
Were they unable to speak, how gladly would they 
listen to the outbursts of insulted humanity, as it 
broke forth in impetuous advocacy of their rights ! 
Every philanthropist who stood up to plead their 
cause, would seem an angel, and every word of con- 
demnation uttered against their oppressors, would 
sound as if emanating from the throne of eternal jus- 
tice. It is easy to bear other men's misfortunes, and 
so long as these men can have all the liberty they 
want for themselves and theirs, they will not much 
heed the fact that millions around them have none at 
all. The story of the slave's wrongs will tire upon 
their ear, and prove disgusting. 

Such, of course, see nothing momentous in the is- 
sues of this controversy — nothing at stake of suffi- 
cient importance to justify stern effort — nothing that 
should disturb the peace of the guilty, or enlist the 
energies of the pure. So trivial is the whole matter, 
that all attempts to keep the question before the pub- 
lic, are resisted as though anti-slavery was already an 
effete speculation. Persons of this stamp do not hesi- 
tate to declare that the subject is entirely exhausted. 
But however true it may be that the arguments and 
resources of these apologists are exhausted, it is not 
at all true of the slave question. The moral miasma 
of this great national sin is spreading everywhere, and 



CONCLUSION. 199 

corrupting the life-blood of the whole country. There 
is not a single free State, nor a single Church in the 
land, but what feels the deadly evil creeping to its 
heart. The subject exhausted! Never 1 Never till 
oppression ceases; never till the last slave is free. 
Tell us not that the subject is exhausted, while more 
than three millions of human beings in our midst have 
not the right to worship God or protect their own 
virtue. Tell it not while these millions — on whom 
rest all the obligations of humanity — are forbidden 
to read the Scriptures, denied marriage, and sold like 
cattle in the market. We envy not the man who can 
survey this accumulated mass of unrighteousness with 
indifference. It is no sight for languid solicitudes. 
These hoary wrongs make no transient appeal to 
Christian sympathy ; they move the heart, and keep 
it moved till God takes away the evil, or withdraws 
the blessing of religious sensibility. But it may be 
said, "this belongs to Cresar — the Church has noth- 
ing to do with the evil." We deny it utterly. The 
Church has everything to do with slavery, if Blai 
is sin. Ciesar belongs to Christ. Sins of the State 
are to be reproved and extirpated as truly as the sins 
of individuals. It is not enough for the Church to 
sav, "it is the State, it is the State," and deem her 
own responsibility ended. TheState must be rebuked 
for its wickedness, [f our Christianity cannot do this 
— cannot remonstrate against iniquity in the high pla- 
ces of our own semi-Christian government- -how isil tit 
to grapple with the legalize., f pagan natioi 

Our religion is not worth exporting to foreign coon- 



200 SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 

tries, if it is thus impotent at home. Exhausted ! 
Yes, when the kingdom of God has fully come, and 
not before. Until that auspicious hour, the Church 
must keep her armor on, and push the battle to the 
gate. 



THE END. 



3^77-2 



